THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 


That  side  of  the  gate  went  down,  and  before  it  had 
come  to  the  ground  Loyd  went  hurdling  through, 
yelling  to  the  men  who  leaped  after  him." — Page  359. 


THE  HEART  OF 

•    A  MAN 


BY 

RICHARD  AUMERLE  MAHER 


NEW  i'oRK,  CINCINNATI,  CHICAGO: 

BENZIGER  BROTHERS 

P*<hlishers  of  Benzi (JUT'S 


COPYRIGHT,  1915.  BY  BENZIGER  BROTHERS 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAOB 

I     THE  CROSS  ON  THE  HILL 7 

II  "THEY  HAVE  NOTHING  TO  EAT"      .      .      .      .31 

III  "My  BROTHER'S  KEEPER?" 58 

IV  THE  DEAN'S  JOURNEY 84 

V     THE  WILL  or  GOD 110 

VI     "GoD  LIVES" 136 

VII     THE  REV.  DOCTOR  HILLIARD 162 

VIII     THE  WORK  AT  OUR  HAND 188 

IX     "His  STRONG  CITY" 214 

X     FATHER  LYNCH'S  WISDOM 240 

XI     "FUEL  OF  THE  FIRE" 267 

XII     THE  PRISONER  OF  His  SOUL 292 

XIII  THE  WILL  OF  THE  STRONG 317 

XIV  As  GOD  MADE  HIM 345 

XV  THE  LONG  ROAD  .........   870 

XVI  THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN                                          .  395 


2137214 


THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

CHAPTER  I 
THE  CROSS  ON  THE  HILL 

T~\EAN  DRISCOLL  sat  quiet  and  argued 
•*—'  ruminatively,  partly  to  himself,  partly  to  the 
Adirondack  foothills  that  stretched  up  and  away 
from  his  house,  and  somewhat  to  the  young  priest 
who  was  nervously  pacing  the  veranda. 

"No,"  said  the  Dean.  "Socialism  will  never 
bring  about  any  acute  crisis  in  this  country.  It 
wants  and  fights  for  too  many  things  that  nearly 
everybody  wants.  The  things  that  nearly  every- 
body wants  will  come,  one  by  one.  Socialism 
gets  a  hearing,  and  a  following,  because  it  prom- 
ises to  get  these  things  for  people.  When  these 
things — the  things  that  nearly  all  of  us  look  for 
— better  conditions  of  living,  fairer  adjustments 
of  the  burdens  of  life,  when  these  come,  then  So- 
cialism, or  the  same  thing  by  another  name,  will 
have  to  think  of  another  set  of  things  that  most 
people  want.  And  so  it  will  go  on." 

'  The  Income  Tax,  now,"  he  went  on  whimsi- 
cally, "that  was  Socialism  till  it  was  seen  that  a 
majority  of  the  voters  were  for  it.  Then  it  be- 

7 


8  THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

came  good  politics.     When  it  was  made  the  law 
of  the  land,  then  it  was  statesmanship." 

"But  the  people!"  contended  Father  Huetter. 
"The  individuals,  the  men,  I  mean — it  draws 
them  away  from  the  Church.  The  Church  has 
to  oppose  Socialism,  and  it  brings  up  the  old 
calumny  that  the  Church  is  always  on  the  side  of 
the  strong,  established  Things  that  Are.  Why, 
I  see  the  day  coming  when  there  will  be  just  two 
big  forces  to  divide  this  country — the  Catholic 
Church  and  Socialism.  Their  struggle  will  be 
to  the  death." 

'Tis  well,"  said  the  old  priest  quietly,  "to  have 
visions  while  you're  young.  When  you  are  old 
you  have  only  the  things  you  have  seen  and  heard 
to  go  by.  And  there's  only  one  vision  left  worth 
looking  to."  He  looked  out  over  the  hills  and 
into  the  deep  blue  of  the  heaven  where  his  one 
vision  lay.  But  he  came  back  quickly  to  the  pres- 
ent. 

"What  did  Jim  Loyd  say  about  the  Bishop's 
sermon  yesterday?  I  saw  him  in  the  crowd  at 
the  back  of  the  church.  He  came  just  because 
it  was  announced  that  the  sermon  would  be  on 
Socialism.  And  he  heard  a  plenty.  You  were 
on  your  rounds  this  morning.  Didn't  you  hear 
anything  from  him?" 

"Yes.  When  he  was  going  down  the  street 
from  the  church  Eddie  Connolly  brushed  past 
Jim  and  asked  him  what  he  thought  of  it — the 
sermon.  He  grunted,  and  answered:  'It's  all 


THE  CROSS  ON  THE  HILL        9 

right.  Us  Socialists  will  have  the  priests  workin* 
like  the  rest  of  us  in  ten  years  from  now.' ' 

The  Dean  laughed.  "So  that  was  it!"  He 
turned  to  the  young  priest,  from  whom  he  loved 
to  draw  sparks.  "Small  wonder  you're  eloquent 
on  the  subject  to-day.  That  was  a  threat  indeed. 
Now,  I'll  not  live  to  see — " 

Father  Huetter  smiled.  He  refused  to  be 
drawn  out.  Then  the  smile  turned  to  that  deep- 
eyed  look  of  mysticism  that  goes  with  the  priests 
of  his  race.  He  said  slowly: 

"There  was  a  Priest  who  worked.  He  was  a 
Carpenter." 

Father  Driscoll  bowed  his  head  gravely:  and 
waited. 

"But  I  am  not  thinking  of  what  Jim  Loyd 
says  about  the  Church,"  the  young  priest  went 
back  to  his  argument.  "I'm  talking  about  what 
Socialism  does  to  him  as  a  man,  to  his  character. 
He  was  an  altar  boy  of  yours  here.  You  buried 
his  father.  You  helped  his  mother  keep  Jim  and 
his  brother  and  sister  together.  They  would 
have  had  to  be  sent  to  a  Home  otherwise.  He 
knows  you.  He  is  intelligent.  He  knows  the 
work  that  you,  as  a  priest,  have  done  here  for 
nearly  forty  years.  Yet,  in  spite  of  all  that,  So- 
cialism takes  away  his  common  sense  and  his  re- 
ligion and  he  has  come  to  the  point  where  he 
hates  the  Church." 

"No.  I  think  you  are  wrong,  Father,"  the 
Dean  said  mildly.  "Jimmie  doesn't  hate  the 


10         THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

Church.  He  can't.  That's  part  of  the  trouble. 
He  loves  the  Church.  So  he  can't  let  it  alone. 
It  won't  let  him  alone.  Am  I  getting  tangled 
up?" 

"Well,  I  don't  quite  see,  Dean." 

"Did  you  ever,  then,"  the  Dean  began  at  a  new 
angle,  "see  a  boy,  a  grown  boy,  when  he's  sullen 
and  angry  and  bitter  and  doesn't  know  what  to 
hit?  What  does  he  hit?  Who  gets  his  bitterest 
word?  His  mother.  The  one  he  can  hurt  most 
— and  hurt  himself  most,  too.  Why?  Who 
knows?  But,  'tis  so.  Now  that's  Jim  Loyd, 
though  he's  a  man  grown.  When  his  life  has 
turned  bitter  on  him  he  has  to  hurt  something. 
We  can  hurt  most  where  we  love  most.  Boy 
and  man  Jimmie  Loyd  never  loved  anything  as 
he  did — and  does,  I  say — love  his  Church. 
When  the  bitterness  comes,  where  he  loves  he 
strikes." 

"But  what  is  his  grievance?"  The  young 
priest  was  back  now  at  the  practical,  every-day 
side  of  the  matter.  "He  makes  good  wages. 
He  doesn't  work  any  harder  than  anybody  else. 
He  wouldn't  be  satisfied  if  he  wasn't  working." 

"That  is  all  true,"  conceded  the  Dean.  "And 
do  not  suppose  that  Jim  Loyd  does  not  see  it 
all.  He  is,  as  you  say,  intelligent.  But  he  is 
more  than  that.  He  has  imagination." 

The  Dean  settled  back  in  his  chair  and  made 
his  case : 

"Jim  is  a  molder.     By  his  skill  and  his  ability 


THE  CROSS  ON  THE  HILL       11 

as  a  foreman  to  teach  and  handle  men  under  him 
he  saves  the  company  hundreds  of  dollars  every 
month  that  would  be  lost  in  spoiled  castings. 
He  is  thirty  years  old.  He  looks  ahead  thirty 
years  more.  And — God  sparing  him — what  will 
he  be?  A  stooped  old  man  with  a  little  hack  of 
a  cough,  hanging  on  doggedly,  to  the  very  job 
he  has  now.  And  one  day  an  assistant  superin- 
tendent fresh  from  a  technical  school  will  walk 
down  from  the  office  to  the  casting-room  of  the 
Milton  Machinery  Company  and  while  he  is 
dodging  a  bucket  of  hot  metal  he  will  decide  that 
old  Loyd  is  slowing  up — the  mill  needs  younger 
blood.  Jim  Loyd  sees  that  before  him." 

The  Dean  paused,  and  Father  Huetter  sat 
down  silently.  He  knew  that  there  was  more  to 
come. 

"As  you  said,"  the  old  priest  went  on,  "he  is 
no  worse  off  than  twenty  million  other  men,  more 
or  less,  in  this  country.  He  knows  that.  But 
Jim  Loyd  is  different.  He  is  a  man  of  power 
wherever  you  put  him.  Do  you  realize  how  he 
has  handled  this  strike  for  the  last  three  months? 
Do  you  know  that  he  is  the  strike,  the  soul  of  it. 
Without  him  it  would  collapse  in  riot  and  blood- 
shed. You  know  how  he  has  kept  your  Poles 
and  Italians  in  line  with  his  own  American  and 
Irish  kind.  It  took  a  big  man  to  do  that,  and 
Jim  Loyd  is  a  big  man.  He  alone  has  gathered 
and  handled  the  money  that  has  kept  two  thou- 
sand families  from  starvation.  He  alone  has 


12          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

kept  out  agitators  and  murderous  interferers 
from  the  outside.  He  is  an  organizer,  a  general, 
a  born  leader  and  driver  of  men. 

"You  want  to  know  what  is  his  grievance. 
Here  it  is.  Jim  Loyd  is  a  bigger  man,  a 
stronger  man,  a  brainier  man  than  the  manager 
of  the  Milton  works.  Why  should  not  Jim 
Loyd  be  in  the  place  of  power  and  responsibility 
that  his  brain  demands  for  him? 

"He  cannot,  because  he  went  into  those  works 
when  he  was  twelve  years  old.  He  lied  his  way 
in  because  he  was  a  big  strong  boy.  He  had  no 
education  whatever,  you  may  say  has  none  to- 
day ;  never  will  have.  When  he  was  younger  he 
could  exult  in  his  growing  body  and  muscles. 
He  was  going  to  be  the  strongest  and  most  com- 
petent man  in  the  mill.  He  is  that  now.  Do 
you  see?  His  life  is  now,  at  thirty,  all  that  he 
can  ever  make  it.  The  iron  begins  to  turn  in 
him.  Do  you  know  what  he  is  saying  to  him- 
self? He  is  saying:  'I  might  as  well  die  now, 
die  now.  I  can  never  do  anything  but  this.'  Do 
you  see  what  that  means  to  the  big,  arrogant, 
masterful  heart  of  the  man?" 

"Why,"  exclaimed  Father  Huetter,  "that  man 
is  not  a  Socialist  at  all." 

"No  more  than  you  are.  He's  the  most  indi- 
vidualistic man  I  ever  saw.  He  should  have 
been  a  poor  baron  of  the  Middle  Ages." 

"Then,  why—?" 

"Why  does  he  shout  the  language  of  it?    Be- 


THE  CROSS  ON  THE  HILL       13 

cause  it  is  a  voice  that  promises  to  every  boy  the 
one  thing  that  Jim  Loyd  could  not  have.  Do 
you  think  he  imagines  Socialism  can  ever  do  any- 
thing for  him  now.  He'd  laugh  in  its  face  if  it 
offered  him  anything.  He  wouldn't  accept  any- 
thing in  this  world  that  he  couldn't  take  with  the 
power  of  his  own  two  hands.  That's  how  much 
of  a  Socialist  he  is." 

"I  guess  there's  more  to- — to  everything  than 
one  thinks  in  the  beginning,"  said  the  young 
priest,  hesitating  a  little.  But  the  Dean  made 
no  comment.  He  went  on  to  his  conclusion: 

"You  are  right  to  say  that  Socialism  will  hurt 
the  faith  and  the  practice  of  many  men.  But  it 
is  not  Socialism  that  ails  Jim  Loyd.  He  has 
just  got  his  head  above  the  horizon  of  life  and  he 
has  just  begun  to  learn  one  terrible  fact — that 
he  cannot  conquer  life.  And  his  heart  is  sore. 
Because  it  is  sore,  he  bruises  the  hurt  by  turn- 
ing on  his  Church." 

"One  day,"  he  continued  gently,  "God,  who  is 
good,  knows  when — Jimmie  will  learn  that  there 
is  something  bigger  even  and  more  terrible  than 
the  loss  of  his  ambitions.  That  will  throw  him 
back  to  his  place.  Then,  no  matter  what  scars 
it  may  carry  from  the  lesson,  Jim  Loyd's  soul 
will  be  the  soul  of  a  great  man." 

He  reached  for  his  breviary,  and  Father  Huet- 
ter,  rising,  went  thoughtfully  about  his  work. 
The  general  relaxation  and  carelessness  brought 
on  in  the  town  by  so  many  people  being  idle,  to- 


14          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

gether  with  the  fact  that  many  were  eating 
poorer  food  than  they  were  accustomed  to,  had 
caused  almost  an  epidemic  of  typhoid.  And  ty- 
phoid is  a  call  that  does  not  wait  till  the  morning. 
The  priest  goes  on  the  instant.  Father  Huetter 
had  had  just  one  undisturbed  night  in  two  weeks, 
and  besides,  at  twenty-eight  a  man  does  not  like 
to  have  his  pet  and  seated  convictions  set  aside 
with  a  word.  It  almost  makes  him  blame  his 
university. 

His  way  took  him  down  the  main  business 
street  of  the  town.  The  strikers  had  hired  a  va- 
cant store  on  this  street  and  around  the  front  of 
it  a  crowd  was  always  gathered.  It  was  really 
just  a  place  for  Jim  Loyd  to  sit  all  day  and  a 
good  part  of  the  night  listening  to  complaints 
and  threats  and  evidences  of  starvation.  And 
Loyd,  as  judge  and  guardian  of  the  relief  funds, 
which  he  himself  gathered  with  mighty  labor,  had 
seen  pretty  nearly  all  that  is  to  be  learned  of  hu- 
man cupidity  and  selfishness.  They  came  to  him 
knowing  that  every  pound  of  flour,  every  pair  of 
shoes  they  might  get,  was  simply  being  taken 
from  someone  else  who  would  need  it  perhaps 
worse  than  they.  Yet  they  came  and  lied  and 
fawned  and  tried  to  get  things  just  for  the  sake 
of  getting  them,  just  because  something  was  be- 
ing given  away. 

Jim  Loyd  wanted  money,  wanted  it  passion- 
ately as  he  wanted  all  the  things  of  life  that  rep- 
resent power.  But  no  money  could  have  hired 


THE  CROSS  ON  THE  HILL       15 

him  to  do  the  work  that  he  was  doing.  It  was 
thankless.  Every  one  had  to  go  away  somewhat 
disappointed.  And  there  was  real  suffering,  a 
great  deal  of  it,  that  he  could  not  relieve.  Yet 
he  could  not  leave  even  the  details  of  the  work  to 
another.  The  women  and  the  weak  ones  trusted 
no  one  else.  And  the  strong  would  have  bullied 
another.  So  he  sat  there  day  after  day  with  the 
cheery,  large  manner  of  courage  for  all,  while 
into  his  heart  his  own  bitterness  ate  and  ate. 

He  had  just  finished  frightening  the  wits  out 
of  a  landlord  who  had  threatened  to  turn  three 
of  the  poorest  families  into  the  street  if  their  rent 
was  not  paid,  when  one  of  the  officers  of  the  union 
came  to  his  desk  with  the  report  that  John  Sar- 
gent himself  was  coming  to  Milton  to  take  direct 
charge  of  the  strike  situation. 

John  Sargent  was  a  man  who  sat  high  up  in 
the  general  office  building  in  New  York  and  kept 
his  hand — a  thin  cold  hand  of  wire — upon  every 
act  of  the  Milton  Machinery  Company  from  the 
time  the  iron  was  bought  underground  until  the 
last  distant  selling-agent  had  made  his  returns 
from  Russia  and  South  America.  He  was  not  a 
manufacturer.  You  could  buy  manufacturers, 
he  said.  Just  as  you  could  buy  machines,  so  you 
could  buy  other  machines  to  run  them.  You 
could  buy  men,  you  could  buy  ideas,  you  could 
buy  patents — or  steal  them.  You  could  buy 
anything,  in  fact,  except  the  spark  of  life — the 
genius  and  the  driving  power  to  make  your  or- 


16 

ganization  live.  That  you  had  to  give  from 
yourself.  He  was  a  creator,  you  see. 

He  was  really  a  banker  whose  business  it  was 
to  show  credit  and  with  that  credit  to  acquire 
vast  sums  of  money,  ready,  hard,  unanswerable 
money  with  which  to  buy  bodies,  brains,  and  ma- 
chines, that  they  might  produce  more  credit,  that 
he  might  acquire  vaster  sums  of  money,  to  buy 
more — .  And  so  on,  around  the  circle  again. 
He  was  as  much  the  squirrel  in  the  wheel  as  was 
the  meanest  of  his  machines,  but  he  refused  to 
know  it. 

The  strike  at  Milton  had  stopped  his  wheel  for 
three  months.  He  knew  that  in  every  jam  of 
machinery  there  is  sure  to  be  just  one  pin  or  one 
piece  that  is  causing  the  whole  trouble.  Lesser 
men  waste  time  taking  the  machine  apart  and 
testing  out  each  piece.  The  genius  goes  straight 
to  that  one  pin,  removes  it,  and — click ! — the 
thing  goes  again.  John  Sargent  knew  that  the 
man  in  Milton  who  could  keep  four  jealous  races 
of  people,  near  the  starvation  point,  in  an  or- 
derly, law-abiding  strike  for  three  months  was 
the  pin  in  the  jam.  He  knew  that  that  man  was 
Jim  Loyd.  He  was  coming  to  Milton  to  remove 
that  pin. 

Jim  Loyd  had  long  ago  looked  over  the  heads 
of  the  superintendents  and  the  manager  of  the 
works  and  had  seen  that  the  strike  would  one  day 
come  to  a  grapple  between  himself  and  John 
Sargent.  And  he  had  exulted  in  the  thought  of 


THE  CROSS  ON  THE  HILL       17 

it.  Personally,  he  might  say,  he  had  nothing  to 
lose.  He  had  nothing  that  John  Sargent  could 
take  away  from  him.  And  while  he  realized 
Sargent's  power  to  make  people  suffer — he  could 
see  it  all  about  him — he  also  knew  that  John  Sar- 
gent was  suffering  too,  in  the  only  way  he  could 
be  made  suffer.  He  was  losing  money.  He 
could  not  lose  much  more.  Therefore,  when  he 
was  coming  now  to  take  personal  charge  it  meant 
that  he  was  ready  to  do  naked  battle.  Loyd 
went  over  the  things  that  Sargent  might  do.  He 
wanted  to  know  what  kind  of  battle  it  would  be. 

But  John  Sargent  had  not  merely  marked  the 
pin  for  removal.  He  had  prepared  the  tools  for 
the  work.  The  night  before  in  New  York  he 
had  written  a  telegram  to  George  Atwater,  man- 
ager of  the  works  at  Milton.  When  Atwater 
had  cleared  up  the  cipher  and  read  the  message 
twice,  he  tore  it  up  slowly  into  very  little  bits  and 
dropped  them  into  the  fan  of  the  air-shaft. 

"I  wonder,"  he  said  bitterly  to  himself,  "if  Sar- 
gent thinks  he  pays  me  for  work  as  low — and  as 
dangerous — as  that." 

The  telegram  read: 

"Spread  report  quietly  Loyd  dealing  with  Sar- 
gent to  sell  out  strikers.  Mention  twenty  thou- 
sand." 

But  Atwater  had  no  notion  of  disregarding 
John  Sargent's  orders.  Few  people  ever  did. 
Before  midnight  of  that  night  the  report  was  the 
topic  of  raging  discussion  in  four  languages. 


18          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

Naturally  Jim  Loyd  did  not  hear  it.  But  all 
day  he  had  known  that  there  was  something  in 
the  atmosphere,  something  in  the  way  people 
had  met  him,  that  was  not  clear.  When  the  re- 
port came  to  him  that  Sargent  was  arriving  in 
town,  he  thought  that  it  was  a  premonition  of 
coming  battle  that  had  made  him  feel  strange. 
About  six  o'clock  there  came  a  break  in  the 
stream  of  those  crowding  in  on  him  for  help  and 
for  orders  and  with  reports.  He  sent  out  to  a 
lunch  cart  across  the  street  for  a  couple  of  sand- 
wiches— his  supper — and  prepared  for  the  even- 
ing's work. 

While  he  waited,  the  telephone  rang,  and  in 
the  little  action  of  lifting  the  receiver  to  his  ear 
he  found  to  his  surprise  that  he  was  tired,  dead 
tired.  This  was  no  way  to  be  prepared  for  John 
Sargent's  move,  whatever  it  might  be. 

Father  Driscoll's  voice  over  the  wire  surprised 
him  still  more : 

"Is  that  you,  Jimmie?"  it  questioned. 

The  boyhood  name — nobody  used  it  to  him 
now — brought  back  the  old  habit  of  reverence. 

"Yes,  Dean.  What  can  I  do?"  He  replied 
before  he  remembered  that — 

"Have  you  had  a  call,"  questioned  the  Dean, 
"to  meet  Mr.  Sargent  yet?" 

"No." 

"You  will,  then,  I  think.  And,  Jimmie — " 
the  old  priest's  voice  held  a  moment  on  the  name. 


THE  CROSS  ON  THE  HILL       19 

"Yes?    What  is  it,  Dean?" 

"Jimmie,  take  what  I  say  the  way  it's  given: 
Don't  go  alone." 

"I  see  nothing  to  fear." 

"I  know  that,  Jimmie.  Call  it  an  old  man's 
whim,  then.  Jimmie.  I've  lived  longer  than 
you  have.  Take  advice.  Do  not  go  alone." 
The  Dean  hung  up  his  receiver,  leaving  Loyd 
sitting  in  brown  thought  with  a  part  of  the  desk 
instrument  in  either  hand. 

The  report  which  all  the  town,  except  Loyd, 
had  heard  had  just  come  to  the  Dean.  Almost 
as  clearly  as  if  he  had  read  the  deciphered  tele- 
gram, the  old  priest  understood  the  plan.  Sar- 
gent did  not  hope  to  huy  Jim  Loyd,  though  he 
might  try  it.  But  with  the  report  once  spread, 
some  would  believe  it,  others  would  waver,  and 
the  moment  Loyd  found  that  he  was  not  abso- 
lutely trusted  he  would  surely  make  some  grave 
mistake;  perhaps  he  would  throw  up  his  work 
with  the  strike  altogether.  They  were  counting 
on  his  temper  and  recklessness  when  angered. 

Loyd  put  back  the  'phone  and  choked  down  a 
part  of  one  of  the  sandwiches.  He  was  hungry, 
but  he  could  not  eat.  There  was  something 
wrong,  very  wrong,  with  him.  Why  had  not 
Father  Driscoll  said  more — or  nothing.  Three 
years  before  this  time,  he  remembered,  the  priest 
would  have  walked  down  the  street  to  him  and 
told  him,  eye  to  eye,  all  that  he  meant.  But  Jim 


20          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

Loyd  did  not  deceive  himself.  He  knew  that  it 
was  not  the  priest  who  had  changed  in  those  three 
years. 

At  eight  o'clock  that  evening  a  clerk  left  the 
offices  of  the  Milton  Company  ostentatiously 
carrying  a  letter  in  his  hand.  He  was  on  no  er- 
rand of  haste  or  secrecy.  He  walked  leisurely 
where  the  lights  were  brightest  and  the  crowds 
thickest.  A  whisper  ran  ahead  of  him,  circled 
around  him  as  he  went,  and  behind  him,  swelled 
into  a  certainty.  He  was  carrying  a  message 
from  Sargent  to  Jim  Loyd.  The  crowd  did  not 
reason.  A  crowd  never  does.  There  was  a  fact. 
They  had  seen. 

Jim  Loyd  took  the  message,  read  it,  reached 
for  his  hat,  and  started  out  into  the  street.  Like 
every  man  who  has  power  over  men,  he  was  al- 
ways sensitive  to  the  attitude  or  the  feeling  of  a 
crowd  toward  him.  As  he  walked  through  the 
crowds  in  the  street  he  was  absorbed  in  his  own 
thoughts  of  the  battle  before  him.  He  spoke  to 
no  one;  looked  at  no  one.  But  he  could  not 
escape  the  feeling  that  there  were  distrust  and 
hostility  all  about  him.  It  crowded  him.  Twice 
he  half  stopped  and  shook  his  big  shoulders,  to 
throw  it  off.  But  it  followed  him,  annoying  him, 
right  up  to  the  gate  of  the  works. 

A  guard  admitted  him  at  the  officers'  entrance 
and  led  him  up  through  the  several  offices  to  the 
room  always  reserved  for  the  rare  visits  of  John 
Sargent  to  Milton. 


THE  CROSS  ON  THE  HILL       21 

The  two  men  studied  each  other  swiftly  as  they 
shook  hands.  Each  saw  in  the  other  a  certain 
driving  ruthlessness  to  get  results.  They  were 
brothers  for  the  moment,  under  all  the  differ- 
ences of  education  and  training.  John  Sargent 
used  none  of  the  preliminaries  of  thunder  or  con- 
descension which  he  used  so  effectively  with 
smaller  men. 

"You,  Loyd,"  he  said  brusquely,  "are  head  and 
brains  of  this  strike." 

"What  next?"  admitted  Loyd  impatiently. 

"This  strike  is  for  the  reinstatement  of  two 
men  whom  my  manager  discharged." 

"It's  for  the  principle  that  you  can't  and  won't 
discharge  any  man  without  cause,"  Loyd  cor- 
rected bluntly. 

"Principles  are  capsules  of  words  for  weak 
people.  You  are  not  a  demagogue.  Why  talk 
like  one?  Will  you  ever  be  discharged  without 
cause?" 

"No.     I  save  you  too  much." 

"What,  then,  have  you,  personally,  to' gain  or 
lose  by  this  strike?" 

"Nothing,"  said  Loyd  shortly. 

"Then  listen.  You  are  not  a  labor  leader. 
You  despise  the  work  and  the  ingratitude  that 
you  know  is  the  only  reward.  You  have  nothing 
ahead  of  you  in  the  works.  You  never  got  the 
training,  and  you  never  will,  now.  You'll  work 
there  till  you  die  of  slow  consumption.  Yet  if 
you  had  a  business  of  your  own,  or  the  money 


22          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

to  make  one,  you  could  go  as  far  as  you  liked. 
And  that  would  be  very  far,  young  man,  very 
far/' 

The  small,  hard-eyed  man  laid  one  arm  along 
the  desk,  and  with  all  the  air  of  one  giving  final 
advice  said : 

"You  have  brains,  you  have  drive ;  add  to  them 
the  money  that  I  am  going  to  give  you  and — sit 
down!"  he  snapped. 

Loyd  had  sprung  from  his  chair  and  lunged 
toward  him. 

"Do  you  think  I  came  here  with  only  one  ar- 
gument?" Sargent  questioned  coolly. 

"One's  enough,"  growled  Loyd,  "if  you  don't 
want—" 

"You  need  not  threaten.  We  are  both  men. 
Sit  down!"  he  repeated.  But  Loyd  turned  to 
pace  the  floor. 

"See  here,"  Sargent  began  again.  "You  are 
thinking  that  you  are  bound  to  these  people,  that 
you  have  led  them  into  this  strike  and  that  they 
trust  you,  that  you  would  be  selling  them  out. 
Now  let's  look  at  the  facts.  How  long  would 
this  strike  have  lasted  but  for  you.  But  for  you 
those  people  would  have  rioted  and  destroyed 
property;  the  militia  would  have  been  called  out; 
the  workers  would  have  become  frightened,  and 
the  strike  would  have  gone  to  pieces.  They 
would  have  been  back  at  work  in  a  month. 
That's  one  thing  you're  thinking,  that  you  owe 
them  loyalty.  And  you're  wrong.  They  haven't 


any  strike.  The  strike  is  yours,  body  and  soul — 
to  buy  or  sell  with. 

"Again :    Do  they  trust  you?" 

Loyd  turned  as  if  struck. 

"When  you  were  walking  up  through  the 
crowds  on  the  street  to-night  do  you  know  what 
every  man,  and  woman,  of  them  was  saying? 
Do  you  know  the  word  that  is  in  everybody's 
mouth  in  this  town  to-night?  I  do.  I  put  it 
there.  The  word  is  this:  Jim  Loyd  has  been 
offered  twenty  thousand  dollars  to  betray  the 
strike.  Will  he  take  it?  They  do  not  know, 
you  see,  whether  you  will  or  not.  That's  how 
much  they  trust  you." 

Jim  Loyd  staggered  to  a  chair.  The  revolt- 
ing confession  which  he  had  just  heard  from  the 
man  did  not  interest  him.  He  was  struck  too 
deeply  for  anger  or  disgust.  Sargent  was  right 
— whatever  means  he  had  used — the  people  did 
not  trust  Jim  Loyd  under  temptation.  They 
never  trusted  anyone.  For  this  he  had  slaved 
through  these  months,  keeping  them  from  riot 
and  bloodshed  and  starvation!  Now  a  word 
from  this  man  who  was  their  known  enemy  was 
enough  to  turn  them  against  the  man  who  had 
done  all  for  them.  He  remembered  the  feeling 
of  distrust  and  anger  that  he  had  sensed  from 
the  crowds  in  the  street.  Sargent  was  right. 

"You  think  you  see  it  all,"  the  other  man  went 
on  levelly,  "and  you  are  mad.  But  you  don't 
see  the  half  of  it.  This  strike  of  yours  is  lost 


24          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

now.  You  may  be  able  to  hold  your  organi- 
zation together  for  another  month.  But  you 
cannot  keep  them  from  rioting  and  destruction. 
They  don't  trust  you,  you  see.  That  will  give 
me  a  chance  to  get  the  militia  here,  and  that  will 
be  the  end.  But  in  the  meantime  my  insurance 
is  canceled — you  see  I  am  putting  myself  into 
your  hands — and  they  may  destroy  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  dollars  on  me  before  they  are 
stopped.  Now,  as  a  measure  of  insurance,  of 
protection,  I  am  asking  you  to  call  this  strike 
off  to-morrow.  If  you  are  the  man  you  think 
you  are,"  he  challenged,  "and  you  say  you  can 
do  it,  there  are  in  that  safe  fifty  thousand  dollars 
in  yellow-backed  money  for  you  to  take  away 
with  you  this  minute.  You  see,  I  trust  you." 

Jim  Loyd  sat  in  a  daze.  His  brain  whirled  in 
a  blaze  of  flaring  emotions.  Anger  and  desper- 
ation against  those  he  had  fed  and  who  looked 
at  him  with  eyes  of  suspicion ;  a  great  hungry  lust 
to  kill  this  man  who  had  ruined  him  with  his  fel- 
lows and  who  now  offered  to  buy  the  wreck ;  and 
fifty  thousand  dollars!  With  fifty  thousand  dol- 
lars to  start  on  Jim  Loyd  could  drive  the  world 
ahead  of  him! 

He  struggled  to  his  feet,  tugging  at  his  collar 
for  air.  He  tore  both  collar  and  tie  from  his 
throat  and  stood  there  bare-necked,  panting. 

God  knows  what  he  was  going  to  do. 

In  through  the  window,  full-toned,  certain, 
deep,  as  a  voice  from  either  end  of  time,  came  the 


THE  CROSS  ON  THE  HILL       25 

tolling  of  the  curfew  bell  from  the  Catholic 
church.  For  forty  years  Father  Driscoll  had 
struck  that  bell  himself. 

Jim  Loyd  stiffened  where  he  stood.  That  bell 
had  stopped  him  in  many  a  boyish  mischief — the 
tone  and  the  thought  of  the  man  who  struck  it. 
Now,  when  passion  and  despair  had  pushed  him 
back  to  elementary  things,  the  tone  smote  him 
full  in  the  face.  He  rushed  blindly  from  the 
room  and  out  into  the  night. 

He  crossed  the  street  and  the  end  of  the  town 
and  struck  straight  away  into  the  hills.  He  did 
not  know,  or  care  where  he  went — only  to  go,  on 
and  on.  But  when  the  mad  impulse  of  flight 
was  spent,  he  turned,  to  face  the  thing  that 
pursued  him.  Standing  on  the  brow  of  the  hill 
he  looked  back  down  upon  it.  There  it  lay  in  the 
sharp,  white  moonlight,  an  evil,  black  thing  that 
crawled  and  crawled  along  the  river.  A  thing  of 
the  slime,  it  looked — the  mill,  as  it  lay  there 
stretching  out  its  long,  low,  black  buildings  like 
feelers,  that  drew  in  the  lives  of  men  and  women. 
Its  black  stacks  were  like  the  horns  of  some  half- 
formed  river  beast,  peering  with  blind  eyes  into 
the  sky. 

All  the  hate  of  a  lifetime,  all  the  raging  pas- 
sions of  this  night  rolled  themselves  into  one  ball 
of  fury  in  the  man's  heart,  and  he  raved  at  the 
thing  there  below  him.  It  had  taken  his  father ; 
it  had  taken  his  mother  as  she  scrubbed  its  offices 
for  unclean  men  to  sit  in ;  it  had  taken  the  youth 


26          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

of  his  own  life,  and  it  would  take  the  rest.  It 
had  made  him  a  machine,  a  thing  measured  in 
buckets  and  castings.  And  to-night  it  had  of- 
fered to  take  his  soul  and  his  manhood.  And 
that  was  not  the  worst.  The  worst,  the  terrible 
thing  was  that  he  had — he  had  listened!  He 
might  have  done  it. 

When  that  thing  down  there,  that  crawling 
thing,  could  do  that  to  him,  to  Jim  Loyd  whom 
all  men — !  No! — Men  did  not  trust  him,  how 
could  they! 

There  was  one  thing  left,  only  one — but  it  was 
enough.  The  rage  in  his  heart  and  his  eyes 
turned  itself  down  till  it  burned  with  the  blue- 
steel  flame  of  mad,  but  deliberate,  purpose.  He 
looked  across  the  mill-pond  and  up  the  river  to 
the  top  of  the  highest  of  the  hills.  There  on  the 
very  crest,  nestling  among  the  roots  of  a  scrub 
white  birch-tree,  there  was  something  that  would 
square  it  all. 

He  could  show  them  still  that  he  was  Jim 
Loyd,  a  big  man,  bigger  than  their  suspicions, 
bigger  than  fifty  thousand  dollars,  bigger  than 
that  slimy  black  thing  down  there  that  took  their 
lives.  He  could  show  them  that  he  was  big 
enough  to  destroy  that  thing,  and  himself  with 
it. 

He  skirted  the  town  till  he  came  down  to  the 
river  at  a  point  almost  opposite  the  high  hill. 
Here,  under  the  alders,  old  Peter  Choyniski  kept 
a  boat  hidden.  Loyd  picked  the  padlock  that 


THE  CROSS  ON  THE  HILL       27 

held  the  two  oars,  and  pulled  silently  to  the  other 
shore. 

On  the  top  of  the  hill,  on  his  knees,  he  dug 
swiftly  with  his  fingers  at  the  roots  of  the  white 
birch.  He  dared  not  use  even  his  knife  to  help. 

Out  of  the  mold  he  drew  a  roll  of  stuff 
wrapped  in  black  oilcloth.  The  roll  was  of  soft, 
fluffy  cotton  and  in  it  lay  embedded  six  slen- 
der, innocent-looking  tubes  of  yellow  liquid,  and 
seven  black  sticks.  There  was  enough  of  the 
terrible  explosive  to  destroy  practically  the  whole 
mill,  yet  Jim  Loyd's  hand  was  steady  and  almost 
careless  as  he  picked  them  out  of  the  cotton  and 
slid  them  into  his  breast-pockets.  He  was  play- 
ing with  Death,  and  he  would  not  be  cheated  in 
the  game. 

Under  the  cotton  lay  a  coil  of  very  fine  wire, 
several  hundred  feet.  In  the  center  of  the  coil 
was  a  little  black  affair  hardly  larger  than  a 
wrist  watch.  It  was  not  a  watch:  it  was  a  tiny, 
powerful  sparker,  modeled  after  the  latest  type 
of  self-starter  for  automobiles.  One  turn  of  the 
lock  in  its  back  gave  a  spark  at  any  number  of 
places  along  the  wire.  In  the  top  of  each  tube 
was  fitted  a  little  copper  plug  with  a  cap  beneath 
to  explode  the  tube.  It  was  a  very  simple  and 
very  sure  contrivance.  But  this  was  no  time- 
clock,  that  the  one  who  set  it  might  be  miles  away 
before  the  explosion.  No,  the  man  who  did  this 
must  stand — and  go — with  his  work. 

It  had  been  brought  into  the  town  by  a  band 


28          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

of  murderous  anarchists  who,  in  the  much-abused 
name  of  Labor,  had  tried  to  take  charge  of  the 
strike  in  the  beginning.  Jim  Loyd  had  taken 
the  thing  from  them  and  had  drummed  them  out 
of  the  town.  Why  he  had  saved  and  hidden  it 
here  he  had  never  been  able  to  tell.  He  would 
have  tried  to  kill  with  his  hands  any  man  who  had 
attempted  to  use  it. 

Now  he  stuffed  the  sparker  and  coil  into  an- 
other pocket  and  rose  from  his  knees.  He  was 
going  to  do  this  thing  deliberately  and  surely. 
No  man  would  stop  him.  And  he  would  go  with 
his  work. 

He  faced  down  across  the  placid  mill-pond  and 
the  mill  below,  dour  and  black,  and  over  the  vil- 
lage now  peacefully  going  to  its  sleep  under  the 
beautiful  moon.  There  was  peace — peace  and 
the  brooding  of  God's  spirit  over  all — and  he  was 
going  to— 

At  the  farthest  side  of  the  village,  lying  up  the 
slope  of  the  rising  hill,  clear-marked  like  a  cameo 
in  the  ivory  light,  was  the  Church.  He  had 
never  noticed  it  from  this  angle.  It  was  a  per- 
fect cruciform,  and  as  he  looked  down  upon  it 
from  this  height  and  distance  it  looked  like  a 
mighty  cross  marked  upon  a  giant  grave.  It 
seemed  to  dominate  and  to  group  the  whole  town 
around  itself  until  it  gave  life  to  all  about  it.  It 
was  the  soul  of  the  picture.  He  stood  there  gaz- 
ing hungrily,  but  blindly. 

Then  something  dropped  from  him.     His  soul 


THE  CROSS  ON  THE  HILL       29 

came  forth  to  his  eyes,  to  look.  And  seeing,  it 
saw  not  the  walls  of  the  church  nor  the  cross,  but 
saw  through  and  through,  and  saw  the  God  of 
the  Altar  there  in  the  Church  eternal.  And 
space  was  gone  and  all  things  between.  So  for 
one  terrible  instant  Jim  Loyd's  soul  stood  naked 
and  unshielded  before  God. 

Mechanically  he  started  down  the  hill.  In  the 
middle  of  the  mill-pond  he  drew  out  the  seven 
slender  tubes  and  dropped  them  gently,  one  by 
one,  into  the  water. 

Father  Driscoll  sat  late  at  night  always  with 
his  books.  When  old  eyes  tired  with  the  strain, 
and  sleep  still  did  not  come,  he  would  rise  and 
steal  out  quietly — he  knew  where  was  every 
board  that  creaked — through  the  back  hall  and 
the  sacristy  to  the  church.  He  would  make  vigil 
a  while  with  the  faithful  little  lamp  before  the 
tabernacle  and  then  he  would  walk  down  to  the 
door  of  the  church  and  open  it  for  a  breath  of  air. 
He  loved  to  look  down  on  the  village  at  this  hour 
of  peace  and  to  breathe  his  little  prayer  for  all 
sinning  and  suffering  ones  in  it. 

To-night  as  he  stepped  out  of  the  door,  there 
on  the  wide  top  step  of  the  church  a  man 
crouched,  crying  bitterly.  He  wept  not  as  a 
woman  weeps,  nor  as  an  angered  man  whines  in 
rage  or  fear,  but  as  a  big,  hurt  boy  cries — with 
long,  wracking  sobs.  The  old  priest  came  over 
and,  putting  his  hand  to  the  man's  shoulder, 
recognized  him. 


30          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

It  was  James  Loyd. 

As  he  felt  the  touch  of  the  priest's  hand  the 
man  rose  and  faced  him.  But  he  did  not  at- 
tempt to  speak. 

Father  Driscoll  stood  a  moment  looking  into 
the  face  of  the  boy  whom  he  had  always  loved. 
Then  he  said,  with  finality: 

"Jimmie,  I  do  not  know  what  they  put  you 
through  to-night.  I  do  not  wish  to,  save  that 
you  have  come  through  it  and  are  here.  But  I 
do  know  that  if  ever  a  man  had  need  of  the  help 
of  God,  then  you  will  be  that  man,  that  you  may 
do  the  work  that  will  be  for  your  hands  here  in 
this  town  for  the  months  to  come. 

"Come  in  to  ask  it  now." 

And  together  they  passed  into  the  church  to 
talk  to  God  in  the  hour  of  midnight. 


CHAPTER  II 
"THEY  HAVE  NOTHING  TO  EAT" 

*  'V^ou  were  wrong,  Dean,"  Father  Lynch  an- 
*  nounced  flatly.  "The  question  is  all  one 
of  political  economy,  anyway.  You  might  bet- 
ter leave  it  alone.  The  Church  is  not  called  to 
settle  it."  He  was  fifteen  years  younger  than 
the  Dean,  and,  privately,  believed  him  the  wisest 
man  in  the  world.  But  they  had  been  neighbor- 
ing pastors  for  twenty-five  years;  this  gave  cer- 
tain privileges. 

"Everything  is  political  economy,  if  you  come 
to  that,"  said  Father  Huetter,  taking  up  the  de- 
fense for  Dean  Driscoll,  who  seemed  to  be  think- 
ing of  something  else.  "It  is  a  question  of  polit- 
ical economy  when  a  man  has  not  five  cents  to 
buy  a  loaf  of  bread.  Also,  it  is  political  economy 
to  ask  why  the  loaf  costs  eight  cents  when  the 
man  has  only  five." 

"You  say,"  the  young  German  priest  went  on, 
laying  down  his  argument  with  finger  on  palm, 
"the  Church  has  not  to  answer  these  questions: 
the  law  of  mine  and  thine  settles  them.  But, 
does  it?  The  law  of  hunger  is  stronger  yet. 
Suppose  the  man  obeys  the  law  of  hunger  and 

31 


32          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

takes  the  bread  where  he  finds  it.  Then  both 
Church  and  State  are  interested.  Each  has  a 
question  to  answer.  Are  we  forever  to  be  tink- 
ering with  remedies  and  mendings?  Are  we 
never  to  root  at  causes?" 

"You  are  thinking  in  small  circles,"  returned 
Father  Lynch.  "You  are  cooped  up  in  your  vil- 
lage here — you  call  it  a  city — where  the  people 
are  too  crowded  around  you.  You  hear  too 
much  of  uplift  and  brotherhood  and  man's  duty 
to  man.  You  imagine  from  it  all  that  one  man 
is  interested  in  another  man ;  how  the  other  lives, 
what  he  does.  He  is  not. 

"Come  up  into  the  hills  with  me,"  Father 
Lynch  waved  a  cherished  pipe  expansively  to  the 
blue  foothills  of  the  Adirondacks,  "and  see  how 
big  the  world  is.  From  Felton  Top  I  can  see 
miles  across  the  valley  to  the  slope  of  Marcy. 
There  is  a  man  there  who  plows  a  big  tract  of 
the  slope  every  spring.  When  he  has  been  delv- 
ing three  days,  at  the  biggest  work  he  does  in  the 
whole  year,  I  can  see  what  he  has  done.  He  has 
made  a  little  black  square,  the  size  of  your  hand, 
in  the  green  of  the  slope.  Now  every  man  in 
the  world  is  as  interested  in  every  other  man  as 
I  am  in  that  man,  or  he  in  me.  I  watch  him  be- 
causej  after  he  has  broken  his  heart  at  it  for  three 
days,  he  makes  a  dot  on  my  view.  He  does  not 
know  that  I  exist." 

"But  that  is  extreme,"  Father  Huetter  con- 
tended. 


"THEY  HAVE  NOTHING  TO  EAT'   33 

"Is  it?  How  many  people  are  there  in  the 
world?" 

"In  figures?  Oh,  a  billion  and  a  half,  I  sup- 
pose, or  more." 

"You  are  right.  The  figures  mean  nothing. 
But  we'll  agree  that  there's  a  lot  of  people,  any- 
way. Now  barring  exceptions,  like  the  Dean 
here  who — and  it's  time  for  him — is  thinking  of 
heaven,  and  you  who  are  worrying  about  Social- 
ism, what  is  practically  every  mother's  son  of  all 
these  men  in  the  world  thinking  about?" 

"He  is  thinking,"  Father  Lynch  answered 
himself,  "of  what  he  can  get,  and  how  he  can 
keep  what  he  has.  And  you  are  surprised  that 
an  individual,  here  and  there,  has  not  the  price 
of  a  loaf,  when  all  the  world  has  been  conspiring 
from  the  beginning  to  keep  it  from  him,  or  to 
take  it  from  him  if  he  has  it.  No  church,  no 
power  on  earth  can  regulate  the  impelling  self- 
ishness of  men.  The  world  is  too  big,  besides. 
And  the  currents  of  supply  and  demand,  of  want 
and  plenty,  flow  about  it  like  the  magnetic 
waves.  You  can  never  hold  them.  You  cannot 
set  the  price  of  labor  or  of  bread,  for  men  will 
give  what  they  have  to  and  take  whatever  they 
can  get  for  each." 

"The  Church  did  just  that  for  seven  hundred 
years,"  Father  Huetter  contended  warmly. 
"And  the  world  was,  relatively,  a  far  bigger 
place  than  it  is  now.  She  laid  the  foundations 
of  modern  Europe  on  just  her  ability  to  curb 


34          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

the  rapacity  of  the  strong  and  to  enforce  equity 
between  great  and  small." 

"She  did.  But  who  knows  about  it  now?  Is 
it  not  a  fact  that  most  modern  history  blames 
her  for  the  very  abuses  which  she  alone  could 
and  did  curb?" 

"But  that  is  the  common  lot  of  every  great 
force  for  good." 

"Just  what  I'm  telling  the  Dean,  here. 
Whether  he  spoke  for  or  against  Socialism  he  is 
bound  to  be  put  in  the  wrong." 

"I  said  nothing  of  Socialism.  I  spoke  to  my 
people  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  as  it  is  written 
for  me,"  the  Dean  put  in  quietly.  "I  was  not 
thinking  of  Socialism.  I  was  thinking  that  to- 
day is  Labor  Day  and  to-morrow  the  schools 
open.  Some  of  the  boys  and  girls  have  shoes, 
because  they  have  gone  barefoot  all  summer  sav- 
ing them  for  school.  But  more  have  none." 

He  turned  to  the  hills.  "Do  you  see  that  blue 
line  across  the  waist  of  Orrin  Mountain?  You 
have  not  been  twenty-five  years  in  these  hills 
without  knowing  what  that  means?" 

"It  means,"  answered  Father  Lynch,  "that 
there'll  be  frost  very  soon." 

"I  was  thinking  of  that,  not  of  Socialism,"  the 
Dean  went  on.  "I  was  thinking  of  the  haggard, 
desperate  faces  of  the  men  before  me.  For  three 
months  they  have  been  hoping  for  a  peaceful  set- 
tlement of  this  strike.  Now,  when  they  have  lost 
faith  in  Jimmie  Loyd — the  only  real  leader  they 


"THEY  HAVE  NOTHING  TO  EAT'   35 

had — they  see  no  hope.  I  was  thinking  of  the 
gray  faces  of  the  mothers  that  have  grown  five 
years  older  in  these  three  months.  They  are 
starving — starving,  mind  you — on  warmed-over 
tea  and  the  scraps  that  the  children  leave.  And 
I  was  thinking  of  the  long  lines  of  young  men 
and  boys  in  the  back  of  the  church.  I  know  their 
faces  every  one,  and  I  have  seen  them  growing 
harder  and  rougher  Sunday  by  Sunday.  To 
them  I  spoke.  What  do  they  know,  or  care, 
about  Socialism?  But  they  are  the  ready,  un- 
thinking material  on  which  anarchy  and  all  its 
forces  work.  A  single  stone  thrown,  a  single 
shot  fired  might  whirl  them  into  riot  and  tragedy. 
Then  would  come  soldiers  and  the  shedding  of 
innocent  blood.  To  them  I  spoke,  begging  them 
in  the  name  of  God  to  commit  no  wrong  against 
man  or  goods,  to  keep  to  themselves,  to  help  each 
other." 

"That  was  yesterday,"  said  Father  Lynch, 
"and  before  this  Labor  Day  is  over  there  will  be 
a  soap-box  on  every  corner  and  on  top  of  it  an 
orator,  Socialist,  I.  W.  W.,  or  some  other  thing, 
denouncing  you  and  the  Church  as  the  foe  of  the 
poor  and  the  unproducing  parasite  of  the  rich." 

Dean  Driscoll  turned  again  to  contemplate  the 
blue  line  across  the  middle  of  Orrin  Mountain. 
His  problem  lay  heavy  upon  him.  He  saw  his 
people  drifting  from  what  had  been  scarcity  and 
privation  in  the  summer  to  what  would  soon  be 
terrible  want  and  suffering.  And  his  strong  old 


36          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

heart  was  shaken  by  the  feeling  of  his  powerless- 
ness  to  prevent  or  to  help. 

"I  did  not  tell  them  to  give  up  their  strike — I 
dared  not,"  he  murmured  to  himself.  "God  was 
not  pleased  to  give  me  wisdom  to  know  what  to 
say,  what  was  right,  in  that.  He  alone  knows 
whether  I  should  not  have  begged  them  to  go 
back  to  work.  Even  time  will  not  tell  now,"  he 
said  sadly,  "after  the  wheel  has  turned,  whether 
I  could  have  done  it,  or  that  it  would  have  been 
right." 

"And  there  is  more,"  said  Father  Huetter. 
"Jim  Loyd  came  to  church  yesterday,  and  for 
the  first  time  in  years  he  came  boldly  up  to  his 
old  pew  beside  his  sister.  The  Socialists  and 
the  fiery  agitators  have  that  to-day.  Last  week, 
after  John  Sargent,  the  owner  of  the  mill,  came 
here,  they  were  saying  that  Loyd  had  sold  out  the 
strike  to  him.  Now  they  are  saying  that  John 
Sargent  used  the  Church  and  the  power  of  the 
priests  to  get  a  hold  upon  Loyd.  It  is  all  a  lie 
against  Loyd,  because  he  was  holding  the  strikers 
so  strictly  and  peaceably;  but  they  are  saying  it 
all  the  more  loudly  because  they  know  that  in 
their  hearts." 

Father  Driscoll  rose  quickly,  as  with  a  sudden 
decision,  and  shook  his  broad,  spare  shoulders. 

"Come  with  me,  Father  Lynch,"  he  said. 
"You  have  time  for  a  step  through  the  town,  be- 
fore your  train  goes." 

Milton  is  one  of  the  many  small  cities  which 


"THEY  HAVE  NOTHING  TO  EAT'   37 

have  grown  up  so  quickly  during  the  last  twenty 
years  in  the  watercourses  of  the  lower  Adiron- 
dacks.  It  is  what  is  called  a  one-mill  town. 
That  is,  its  life  practically  depends  upon  its 
water  power  and  that  is  owned,  high  and  low,  by 
a  single  company.  The  Milton  Machinery  Com- 
pany holds  the  life  and  the  pulse  of  the  town  in 
its  hand.  You  may  say  that  every  individual  in 
the  place  who  is  not  independently  wealthy  lives, 
directly  or  indirectly,  from  the  earnings  of  that 
single  plant. 

The  individual  worker  who  has  grown  to  mid- 
dle manhood  in  this  plant  is  bound  to  it  as  thor- 
oughly, almost,  as  any  system  was  ever  able  to 
bind  a  feudal  serf  to  the  land.  He  cannot  work 
in  any  other  mill  in  the  town.  There  is  no  other. 
No  other  occupation  is  open  to  him.  He  cannot 
move  away.  He  has  his  family,  probably  a  little 
home  which  he  cannot  sacrifice. 

The  normal  condition,  under  which  a  worker 
is  free  to  sell  his  labor  or  not,  as  he  wishes,  and 
under  which  an  employer  is  free  to  buy  or  not  to 
buy,  at  the  worker's  terms,  do  not  obtain  here. 
Perhaps  that  normal  condition  never  did  fully 
obtain  anywhere  in  civilization.  Here,  in  this 
town,  it  is  impossible. 

The  company  or  corporation  is  not  free.  The 
greatest  wealth  it  has  is  fixed  at  this  point,  by 
water  power  and  established  railroad  facilities. 
It  cannot  move  away.  It  cannot  employ  other 
men.  It  can,  of  course,  with  full  police  protec- 


88          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

tion,  and  at  enormous  expense,  bring  in  a  tem- 
porary force  of  workers,  unskilled  and  floating, 
and  with  these  it  can,  nominally,  run  its  plant  for 
a  time.  But  this  is  only  for  effect ;  to  discourage 
the  regular  workers  and  to  compel  them  to  come 
back  to  work,  at  the  company's  terms.  To  ex- 
pect to  run  any  great  plant  with,  perhaps,  four 
to  six  thousand  untrained,  unsteady  men — each 
one  destroying  more  values  each  day,  by  wasting 
materials  and  mishandling  machinery,  than  his 
labor  could  possibly  produce — would  be  mere 
madness.  The  trained  worker  who  by  his  life 
habits  and  family  obligations  is  bound  to  be  ef- 
ficient, steady,  and  loyal  is  as  valuable  and  as  es- 
sential to  the  conduct  of  a  plant  as  is  every  costly 
piece  of  machinery  in  it.  He  is  even  more  so, 
for  money  cannot  replace  him  at  once. 

The  situation  is  simple.  These  men  must 
work  for  this  company.  This  company  must 
employ  these  men. 

When  a  strike  or  a  lock-out  is  declared  in  a 
town  like  this  there  can  be  no  weakening  on 
either  side.  The  sides  are  locked  too  closely  in 
the  struggle.  One  party  or  the  other  must  lose  a 
very  valuable,  an  almost  vital  advantage. 

Starvation  stands  at  the  back  of  one  party, 
bankruptcy  is  a  ditch  behind  the  other. 

Here  Socialism  comes  in  with  a  remedy — -Let 
the  State  confiscate  the  plant  and  run  it  for  the 
benefit  of  the  workers. 

But  this  particular  State  is  not  interested;  it 


"THEY  HAVE  NOTHING  TO  EAT'  89 

knows  nothing  about  the  business  of  making 
machinery. 

The  remedy  is  not  at  hand,  cannot  be  procured. 

Then,  says  Socialism,  orate,  cry  aloud,  cut, 
tear,  and  burn  if  necessary,  to  make  the  State  in- 
terest itself. 

Anarchy  and  the  attendant  harpies,  hearing 
the  glorious  words,  rush  in  to  spread  the  flame. 

And  intelligent,  God-fearing  men  who  have 
worked  all  their  lives,  who  want  only  to  work  and 
be  paid  for  it,  and  who  would  not  tear  a  board 
from  a  neighbor's  fence,  stand  looking  nervously 
at  the  pinched  faces  and  too  big  eyes  of  their  un- 
fed children. 

They  do  not  know  what  to  do.  Who  will  tell 
them? 

"Forty-one  years,"  said  the  Dean  slowly,  lay- 
ing his  hand  on  Father  Lynch's  arm,  as  the  two 
walked  down  the  street,  "have  I  been  here  in  this 
place.  I  saw  it  grow  from  a  forge  and  a  ford 
and  a  little  tannery  into  what  it  is.  I  went  over 
the  trails  from  here  to  Fulton,  a  hundred  and 
fifty  miles.  Some  families  saw  a  priest  once  in 
the  year,  some  not  that.  And  they  kept  the 
Faith.  Dear  man,  how  they  kept  the  Faith! 

"Often  it  seems  so  short,  the  time,  when  I  look 
back,  that  I  think  the  Angel  must  have  brushed 
his  wing  over  it  in  the  night.  And  look! 
There  are  twenty  like  you  up  there  in  the  hills 
where  I  went  alone,  and  forty  thousand  souls 
gathered  about  you,  and  your  churches  and  your 


40          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

little  schools.  And  here  is  this  city  with  its 
churches  and  its  two  good  Catholic  schools. 
And  I  have  said  to  myself: 

"The  people  are  safe  now.  They  will  never 
lose  the  Faith.  After  they  have  kept  it  through 
all  those  times  and  changes  nothing  can  ever 
argue  them  out  of  it. 

"And  do  you  know  that  I  have  seen  more  loss 
of  faith  here  among  my  men  in  the  last  three 
months  than  ever  happened  anywhere  in  times 
when  there  were  no  priests  and  no  churches!" 

"The  men  are  idle,  and  careless,"  Father 
Lynch  explained. 

"It  is  not  that,"  said  the  Dean  sadly.  "I  have 
seen  strikes  and  strikes.  The  same  thing  is  hap- 
pening in  every  one  of  our  small  cities  where  a 
single  industry  controls  the  place.  The  men  are 
forever  galled  hy  the  thought  that  they  are  hound 
for  life  to  one  company  and  one  piece  of  work. 
And  the  Socialist  comes  along  and  stands  at  the 
mill  gate  in  the  lunch  hour  and  tells  the  men  that 
they  are  slaves,  that  the  old  institutions,  the  old 
superstitions,  the  Church  and  so  on,  made  them 
so  and  will  keep  them  so." 

"If  the  Socialists  want  reforms,  why  do  they 
not  go  about  and  get  them  as  other  people  have 
to  do;  and  leave  the  Church  to  her  business?" 

"There,"  said  the  Dean,  "is  where  Father 
Huetter  would  ask  you:  What  is  the  Church's 
business?  But  let  that  pass.  Do  you  read  any 
of  the  Socialist  pamphlets,  Father  Lynch?" 


"THEY  HAVE  NOTHING  TO  EAT'   41 

"I  do  not."  Father  Lynch  acquitted  himself 
decisively.  "I  have  one  Socialist  in  my  parish. 
Jle  spends  more  on  books  than  he  does  on  fer- 
tilizer. I  can  prove  it  on  his  fields  of  corn." 

"Maybe  you  are  right.  Perhaps  you  are  as 
wise  on  the  matter  as  we  who  do  read  them. 
But,  whenever  they  say  anything  that  is  definite, 
they  say  this:  The  whole  base  of  modern  civili- 
zation is  wrong:  it  must  be  changed:  before  it 
can  be  changed  two  things  must  be  abolished: 
they  are,  the  conservative  power  of  private  own- 
ership of  property  and  the  conservative  power  of 
the  Catholic  Church :  these  two  stand  in  the  way 
of  all  sweeping  changes. 

"Now,  when  the  men  are  full-fed  and  times  are 
well  with  them  they  chaff  the  orators  a  little  and 
go  back  to  their  work.  It  is  a  noontime  diver- 
sion. But  when  they  are  hungry  and  there  is  no 
work  to  go  back  to,  they  stand  and  think.  Man, 
don't  I  see  it  in  their  eyes?  They  look  at  me. 
Haven't  I  all  their  lives  told  them  what  to  do? 
Can  I  tell  them  now?  Do  you  not  hear  the  ques- 
tion hurled  at  them  from  every  side,  and  see  it 
gripping  into  their  mind:  What,  after  all,  is 
the  Church?  What  am  I  doing  for  them  now, 
when  they  need  me?  If  they  do  wrong,  and 
come  to  church  afterward,  I  can  tell  them  that 
they  did  wrong. 

"Do  you  see  that  crowd  all  up  and  down  the 
street  below  us  there?  I  could  stand  on  the  steps 
of  the  bank  and  raise  my  hand  and  two  thousand 


42          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

men  would  listen.  What  would  I  tell  them? 
Should  I  tell  them  to  go  back  to  work  and  give 
up  the  fight  that  means  so  much  to  them,  or 
should  I  tell  them  to  go  on  starving  quietly? 
Am  I,  then,  a  blind  shepherd  to  a  stumbling  peo- 
ple!" 

"Forgive  me,  Dean,"  said  Father  Lynch  with 
feeling;  "I  was  flippant  back  there.  I  did  not 
know  that  you  took  it  so." 

But  the  Dean  was  not  listening.  His  thought 
ran  into  a  yet  deeper  current  of  self-reproach. 

"Schools!"  he  exclaimed,  with  something  that 
was  almost  bitterness  in  his  voice.  "Schools!  I 
can  open  the  schools  to-morrow.  But  can  the 
children  come  to  them  if  they  have  not  bread  in 
their  little  stomachs!  Can  I  answer  them  that!" 

They  were  getting  down  now  among  the 
Crowds  of  State  Street.  They  were  not  the  holi- 
day crowds  of  other  Labor  Days.  When  a  town 
has  been  cut  off  from  its  one  source  of  money, 
when  men  are  walking  and  standing  about  the 
streets  by  the  hundred  literally  without  a  cent  in 
their  pockets,  there  is  no  holiday-making.  The 
faces  of  the  older  men  were  moody;  many  of 
them  had  not  had  a  smoke  for  days.  The 
younger  men  and  the  boys  were  noisy  and  in- 
clined to  be  ugly.  They  moved  and  pushed  from 
one  packed  group  to  another.  In  the  center  of 
each  group,  on  the  soap-box  that  Father  Lynch 
had  predicted,  a  leather-voiced  orator  bellowed 
forth  one  of  the  ten  thousand  cure-alls  that  So- 


"THEY  HAVE  NOTHING  TO  EAT'   43 

cialism  is  father  to.  If  a  particular  speaker  did 
not  please  them  the  young  fellows  jammed  in 
and  broke  up  his  group.  No  one  was  being  hurt, 
but  it  was  not  the  inconsequent  roystering  of,  for 
instance,  a  college  crowd.  There  was  an  under- 
running  sullenness  in  these  crowds  that  needed 
only  some  quick,  sharp  provocation  to  burst  it 
into  terrible  and  destroying  anger. 

It  was  noticeable  that  there  were  hardly  any 
women  on  the  street,  through  there  had  been  no 
actual  violence  nor  any  word  of  it.  A  sense  of 
brooding  danger  was  in  the  air,  and  such  women 
as  had  to  pass  along  State  Street  slipped  unob- 
trusively on  their  way,  keeping  as  close  as  possi- 
ble to  the  fronts  of  the  stores  on  either  side. 

"Now  this,"  said  Father  Lynch,  studying  the 
crowd  that  filled  the  street  from  curb  to  curb, 
"this  has  nothing  to  do  with  Socialism.  These 
talkers  might  as  well  be  shouting  the  multiplica- 
tion table,  or  beating  drums.  All  the  crowd 
wants  from  them  is  noise,  plenty  of  it.  Nobody 
is  listening.  This  is  not  Socialism,  'tis  a  mob." 

"Dear  man,"  said  the  Dean,  "there  is  no  such 
thing  as  a  mob.  Every  crowd  like  this  is  made 
of  men — every  man  with  his  own  hunger  and  his 
own  anger  and  his  own  bitterness.  There  are 
men — I  could  point  to  them — men  that  I  bap- 
tized, men  that  I  caned  in  school,  men  that  I  mar- 
ried. Are  they  a  mob  to  me?  Are  they  not  the 
souls  that  God  has  written  on  my  account.  If 
they  fight,  if  they  burn,  if  they  kill — God  have 


44          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

mercy! — will  a  mob  answer  for  them?    It  will 
be  every  man  marking  his  own  soul! 

"You  say  they  are  not  listening.  How  can 
you  know?  How  can  you  know  that  in  all  this 
outpouring  of  noise  there  are  not  words  of  truth  ? 
And  truth,  even  when  it  is  dragged  to  unjust 
conclusions,  truth  carries." 

"Listen  to  this." 

A  slight,  dark  young  man  of  French-Canadian 
type,  on  a  box  near  the  curb,  was  shrilly  denounc- 
ing Jim  Loyd  because  the  latter,  when  he  had 
been  in  absolute  command  of  the  strike,  had  not 
allowed  a  Socialist  speaker  in  the  town;  had  in- 
sisted, in  fact,  that  the  strike  was  the  business 
of  the  men  of  Milton  and  of  no  one  else. 

"Why,"  he  was  shouting,  "did  your  Jim  Loyd 
keep  the  Socialists  away  from  here  as  long  as  he 
could?  Why?  Because  he  did  not  want  you  to 
hear  the  truth.  He  wanted  to  be  the  big  man 
and  make  you  obey  him.  Now  he  has  sold  you 
out,  tried  to  sell  you  like  sheep.  For  why?  For 
what?  Money,  money;  always  money  is  master! 
And  the  priests!  The  Church!  Did  they  not 
tell  him  to  do  it?  Are  they  not  the  friends  of 
the  strong,  of  the  powers?  They  want  things  as 
they  are.  They  do  not  want  the  change.  In 
the  change  they  would  lose  you.  Suffer,  they 
preach  to  you,  and  peace.  Suffer,  yes!  You 
are  suffering.  But  peace — Where  is  peace?"  he 
shrieked.  "Do  they  give  you  peace?  They  tell 


"THEY  HAVE  NOTHING  TO  EAT'   45 

you  to  hold  your  hand,  and  to  starve — in  peace. 
If  you  die  they  will  bury  you — for  a — " 

He  stopped  bewildered.  A  sudden  ominous 
hush  had  fallen  over  the  crowd.  He  saw  that 
they  were  not  looking  at  him  but  at  something 
beside  him.  He  turned  sharply — and  looked 
full  into  the  white,  pain-drawn  face  of  Dean 
Driscoll.  The  old  priest  was  so  tall  that  he  stood 
a  head  and  more  above  the  crowd.  His  face  was 
on  a  level  with  the  speaker's. 

The  youth's  mouth  fell  open,  and  his  right 
hand  jerked  instinctively  toward  his  forehead. 
He  drew  it  back  quickly  and  turned  again  to  the 
crowd,  trying  to  go  on  with  his  speech.  But 
they  would  not  let  him.  They  had  seen  him  lose 
his  nerve.  And  they  knew  just  what  that  little 
gesture  of  his  hand  to  his  head  had  meant.  They 
jeered  him  down  from  his  box. 

"Now  that  boy,"  said  the  Dean,  as  the  two 
priests  pushed  their  way  on  down  the  street,  "was 
raised  in  a  Catholic  school.  Do  I  not  know  the 
quick  snap  of  a  boy's  hand  to  his  hat,  when  I 
come  around  a  corner  and  see  him  with  a  stone  in 
his  hand,  or  something?" 

"No  doubt,"  said  Father  Lynch.  "And  it's 
likely  that  some  poor,  foolish  French  priest  in  Co- 
hoes  sent  him  to  college,  too.  Now,  explain  it." 

"I  can  explain  nothing,"  admitted  the  Dean. 
"Long  ago  I  found  that  out.  The  boy  is — a  boy. 
He  is  unbaked.  Some  of  it  is  bravado,  to  show 


46          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

that  he  is  not  afraid  of  the  things  that  his  good 
old  father  and  mother  loved.  Part  of  it  is  what 
the  French  have  been  writing  and  saying  for 
three  hundred  years  and  more.  And  the  rest  of 
it  is  what  is  being  heard  day  in  and  day  out 
around  the  mills  of  Cohoes  and  Schenectady." 

The  Dean  looked  appraisingly  down  the 
street. 

"There  are,"  he  estimated  aloud,  "two  hundred 
or  more  of  these  agitators  in  the  town  to-day. 
They  may  be  talking  on  anything  from  the  uni- 
versal deluge  to  suffrage,  but  their  one  imme- 
diate purpose  here  to-day  is  to  create  trouble,  to 
excite  our  men  into  some  lawlessness.  The  talk- 
ers and  Socialism  need  the  advertising.  But 
they  did  not  come  here  and  pay  their  own  ex- 
penses to  talk  for  the  love  of  man  nor  for  the  love 
of  talking.  Somebody  paid  their  expenses,  and 
is  paying  them  for  their  day's  work.  Who? 

"God  knows,  it  does  not  fit  me,  with  my  foot 
in  the  grave,  to  think  men  worse  than  they  are. 
But  John  Sargent  is  a  ruthless  man.  He  would 
do  that,  or  anything  else,  to  get  the  soldiers  here. 
It  would  be  his  logical  move,  he  being  the  man 
that  he  is." 

They  were  come  now  down  into  the  densest  of 
the  crowds,  where  men  stood  packed  all  across 
the  street.  Here  in  the  store  floor  on  the  right 
was  where  Jim  Loyd  had  sat  all  through  the  sum- 
mer, dispensing  justice  and  food  to  the  most 
needy,  and  ruling  the  strike  with  a  hand  of  iron. 


"THEY  HAVE  NOTHING  TO  EAT'   47 

He  was  working  there  still,  appealing  by  letter 
and  telegram  to  newspapers  and  individuals  and 
labor  unions  everywhere  for  the  relief  money  that 
came  in  such  little  dribbles  and  was  eaten  up  so 
quickly.  But  though  he  worked  eighteen  hours 
a  day,  when  all  the  world  about  him  was  idle,  his 
work  now  lacked  the  driving  energy  and  confi- 
dence that  it  had  shown  before  that  night  last 
week  when  John  Sargent  had  offered  him  fifty 
thousand  dollars  to  get  the  strike  declared  off. 
All  men  knew  that  the  offer  had  been  made.  No 
man  knew  how  it  had  been  received.  Jim  Loyd 
did  not  tell.  No  one  dared  speak  to  him  of  it. 

He  had  seen  suspicion  and  distrust  of  him  in 
the  eyes  of  men  who  had  known  him  all  his  life, 
and  it  had  cut  deep  into  the  violent,  proud  char- 
acter of  the  man :  the  more  so  because  he  remem- 
bered that  in  that  first  mad  moment  of  John  Sar- 
gent's offer  to  him  he  had  looked — looked  at  the 
temptation.  He  followed  the  routine  of  his 
work  doggedly,  but  he  was  not  ruling  the  strike 
now.  Nobody  was  ruling  it.  It  was  drifting 
blindly  toward  riot  and  destruction.  And  his 
hand  was  not  raised  to  hold  it  back.  He  was  not 
sulking.  He  would  have  gone  out  into  the  street 
and  died  for  his  cause  and  his  men.  But  the 
power  of  his  hand  was  gone. 

All  day  long  he  had  been  listening  to  the 
frothy  oratory  that  billowed  up  and  down  the 
street.  If  he  were  really  in  charge  of  the  strike 
now,  as  he  had  been,  he  would  have  picked  out 


48          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

two  or  three  quiet,  resolute  men  to  escort  each 
talker  to  the  first  train  out  of  town.  He,  too, 
believed,  as  the  Dean  out  in  the  crowd  was  even 
then  saying,  that  John  Sargent  had  secretly  sup- 
plied the  money  to  bring  these  strangers  into  the 
situation.  What  had  come  to  the  priest  as  in- 
tuition had  come  to  Loyd  as  almost  certain 
knowledge.  And  now  as  he  looked  out  over  the 
crowd  and  thought  of  the  work  that  John  Sar- 
gent was  trying  to  do,  and  what  he  had  tried  to 
do  to  him,  Jim  Loyd,  and  to  his  manhood,  a 
red  mist  of  blinding  anger  swept  before  his  mind. 
He  was  back  in  Sargent's  office  on  that  night 
when  the  latter  had  offered  his  bribe,  and  now  as 
then  he  found  his  fingers  aching  to  take  the  maif 
by  the  throat  and  take  his  life  with  his  naked 
hands.  He  rose  shaking  his  shoulders,  like  a 
breathed  steer,  and  came  to  the  front  of  the  office. 

He  saw  the  Dean  and  Father  Lynch  out  there 
trying  to  make  way  through  the  crowd,  saw  that 
the  Dean  was  very  pale  and  tired-looking,  and  he 
opened  the  door  to  tell  them  to  come  inside  and 
rest  a  moment  and  watch  the  crowd.  But  there 
was  no  moving  in  any  direction.  Some  new 
force  was  jamming  the  crowd  up  from  farther 
down  the  street.  But  no  one  could,  at  this  point, 
see  what  it  was. 

Little  Joe  Page,  the  town  dwarf  and  antic,  had 
gotten  possession  of  a  kerosene  barrel  at  the  curb 
and  had  clambered  up  on  it.  He  was  holding  a 
meeting  of  his  own,  and  his  audience  was  full 


"THEY  HAVE  NOTHING  TO  EAT'   49 

three  times  larger  than  that  of  any  other  orator 
of  the  day.  With  the  barrel,  he  had  gotten  pos- 
session of  the  main  argument  of  the  Socialists. 
Things  were  unequal  in  the  world :  they  must  be 
leveled.  He  had  often  thought  of  that,  he  ar- 
gued. He  lived  and  ate  in  a  boarding-house,  he 
said;  where  seven  tall,  long-armed  men  also  ate. 
He  named  and  accused  them  all,  and  the  crowd, 
knowing  the  men  by  name,  cheered  him  on  to  his 
conclusion.  Why  should  those  men,  he  de- 
manded, be  able  to  reach  out  and  grab  the  firsts 
of  everything,  while  he  with  his  fourteen-inch 
arms  must  wait  until  the  last  of  the  plate  was 
passed  to  him?  He  clamored  and  ranted  with 
the  best,  that  this  must  be  changed.  A  law  must 
be  passed  that  all  long-armed  men  living  in 
boarding-houses  should  have  their  elbows  tied  to 
their  sides.  His  argument  was  as  sound  and  as 
practicable  as  many  that  were  being  hysterically 
shouted  along  the  street. 

Fifteen  years  before,  when  his  little  double 
joints  were  getting  too  stiff  for  the  hard  service, 
a  circus  had  dropped  Joe  Page  stranded  in  Mil- 
ton. He  had  climbed  sturdily  on  to  a  high  stool 
before  a  lathe  table  in  the  Milton  Machinery 
works  and,  asking  nothing  of  any  man,  had  fitted 
himself,  dwarfed  and  vagabond  mite  that  he  was, 
into  a  place  of  respect  as  the  fastest  and  cleverest 
lathe- worker  in  the  plant. 

Men  in  that  crowd  loved  the  little  dwarf  for 
his  independence  and  his  funny  old,  old  face. 


50          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

They  said,  barring  length,  that  he  was  more  of 
a  man  than  most.  Now  he  was  giving  them  the 
only  laugh  of  the  day,  indeed  of  many  days. 
And  they  were  grateful,  for  they  knew  that  he 
was  as  hungry  and  as  bitter  in  heart  as  they. 

"There  now,  do  you  see,"  said  Father  Lynch 
at  the  Dean's  elbow,  "the  little  man  has  the  hill 
on  them  all.  He  knows  what  he  wants  and  how 
it  should  be  done." 

Father  Driscoll  was  looking  down  the  street. 
He  saw  what  others  could  not  see.  A  look  of 
anger  and  trembling  anxiety  clouded  his  face. 
Jim  Loyd,  watching  him,  knew  that  something 
threatening  was  impending,  and  he  pushed  out 
to  see. 

John  Sargent  was  walking  coolly,  deliberately 
up  the  street.  In  years  John  Sargent  had  not 
set  foot  on  the  streets  of  Milton,  except  to  cross 
the  sidewalk  to  and  from  his  automobile.  On 
this  day,  of  all  days,  when  he  should  have  kept 
away,  he  walked  contemptuously  through  the 
crowd  with  an  air  of  open  aggravation.  At  his 
elbow  at  every  step  were  men,  serious,  good  men, 
who  had  worked  patiently  all  their  lives  for  his 
father  and  for  him,  building  up  the  fortune  that 
he  was  now  using  against  them.  He  looked 
them  in  the  eyes,  and  sneered;  sneered  at  their 
hunger,  at  their  patience,  at  their  self-control  as 
they  carefully  made  a  path  for  him  through  the 
packed  crowd.  Every  speaker  that  he  passed 
execrated  him  to  the  crowd,  crying  him  out  to 


"THEY  HAVE  NOTHING  TO  EAT'   51 

them  as  their  enemy,  who  was  holding  the  bread 
from  their  mouths.  They  bullied  the  crowd  for 
cowardice  and  dared  it  to  stop  him  now  and  settle 
its  question  with  him  at  once.  But  no  man's 
hand  was  raised.  They  gave  him  way  so  that  no 
man  even  brushed  his  coat  in  the  press. 

What  was  in  John  Sargent's  mind  when  he 
started  for  that  walk  up  the  street,  is  hard  to 
say. 

Through  a  pretended  local  Socialistic  commit- 
tee which  existed  only  in  his  own  office,  he  had 
sent  out  the  call  and  the  expense  money  to  bring 
the  agitators  into  the  town  for  Labor  Day.  The 
strikers  must  be  incited  to  rioting  or  violence  of 
some  sort.  This  would  give  him  the  chance  to 
demand  State  troops  from  the  Governor.  A 
show  of  overwhelming  force  on  the  ground  would 
break  the  heart  of  the  strike.  He  would  then 
have  only  to  make  the  merest  pretense  of  run- 
ning the  mill  with  imported  labor,  and  his  men 
would  begin  coming  back  to  work. 

But  it  was  now  coming  toward  evening.  His 
reports  told  that  the  men  did  not  seem  ready  to 
fall  into  his  plans.  They  were  sullen  but  quiet, 
and  paying  little  heed  to  the  wild  talk.  He  had 
spent  good  money  on  this  day  and  he  was  not 
minded  to  see  it  go  for  nothing.  He  knew  that 
his  own  presence  would  excite  and  anger  the 
crowd  more  than  any  talk  could  do.  Though 
physical  fear  was  a  thing  which  he  had  never 
known,  it  is  not  likely  that  he  expected  to  be  act- 


52          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

ually  attacked.  Still  he  seemed  to  be  doing 
everything  calculated  to  that  end.  But  men 
drew  soberly  away  from  him.  He  saw  that  he 
would  not  be  molested  unless  he  struck  or  pushed 
some  one.  It  maddened  him  to  think  that  a 
stupid  crowd  could  so  mate  his  plans  by  its  mere 
stolidity. 

When  he  came  to  where  little  Joe  Page  stood 
on  his  barrel  demanding  the  law  to  restrain  long- 
armed  men,  he  scowled  angrily.  This  was  not 
the  thing.  John  Sargent  did  not  want  the 
lightning  to  discharge  itself  harmlessly  in 
laughter  and  nonsense. 

Little  Joe,  feeling  the  sudden  charged  tense- 
ness of  the  air  about  him,  looked  around  for  the 
cause. 

John  Sargent  shouted : 

"Get  down,  clown,"  he  commanded,  stamping 
his  foot  in  rage. 

Now  there  was  no  reason  in  the  world  why  Joe 
Page  must  obey  an  order  of  John  Sargent.  But 
when  one  man  has  given  another  his  unquestion- 
ing obedience  through  the  working  hours  of 
years,  the  habit  is  liable  to  be  stronger  than  any 
circumstances. 

The  dwarf  made  a  handspring  off  the  barrel, 
landed  on  his  feet  and  came  to  attention,  with  a 
mock  circus  salute,  directly  beneath  John  Sar- 
gent's waistcoat. 

Whether  he  took  the  salute  as  impudence  and 
was  blinded  with  rage,  or  whether  he  did  it  with 


calculated  malice,  does  not  matter:  John  Sar- 
gent raised  a  heavy  boot  and  kicked  the  tiny  man 
in  the  side.  The  midget  fell  to  the  walk. 

The  crowd  went  roaring,  stark  mad.  Men 
shouted  and  tore  at  each  other  to  come  near  Sar- 
gent. The  man  nearest  him  struck  him  a  quick, 
glancing  blow  in  the  face  that  sent  him  spinning 
round  and  round.  He  would  have  fallen  and 
the  crowd  would  have  trampled  him  to  death  had 
not  a  lean,  strong  old  arm  reached  out  over  an- 
other's shoulder  and  caught  him.  It  was  Father 
Driscoll  who  had  managed  to  reach  him  just  in 
time.  He  caught  him  to  him  and  pushed  him  up 
against  the  store  front.  Then  he  turned  to  face 
the  crowd,  and  his  great  height  and  wide  frame 
completely  covered  the  other  man  from  sight. 

The  eyes  of  the  old  priest  blazed  and  his  breath 
came  fast  with  the  excitement,  but  the  crowd 
looking  into  his  face  knew  that  he  was  in  com- 
mand. He  raised  his  hand  and  the  hands  of  the 
crowd  dropped.  Short,  ugly-looking  clubs,  that 
had  suddenly  appeared  from  nowhere,  stole 
quietly  back  to  their  places.  He  spoke  to  them 
in  a  voice  that  was  quiet  but  so  tense  that  it 
carried  up  and  across  the  street  in  the  strained 
hush. 

"My  men,"  he  said,  "no  man  dare  blame  you 
for  your  anger.  But  did  not  this  man,  who  is, 
for  the  time  at  least,  your  enemy,  did  he  not  come 
here  with  purpose  to  anger  you,  to  get  you  to 
strike  or  threaten  him?  Heads  that  are  cool 


54          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

among  you  and  can  think  know  what  he  has  to 
gain  from  your  anger.  Will  you  let  him  beat 
you  in  a  game  of  wits?  Because  he  thinks  you  a 
senseless  mob  that  he  can  play  upon  at  will,  shall 
you  prove  to  him  that  he  is  right?" 

He  did  not  preach  to  them,  he  merely  put  into 
the  concrete  what  he  had  said  to  his  own  men  and 
boys  the  day  before.  And  men  of  his  own  flock 
and  men  of  no  flock,  alike,  knew  that  he  spoke 
God's  truth  and  common  sense. 

In  the  meantime  John  Sargent  had  gone. 
Jim  Loyd  had  reached  out  and  pulled  him  into 
the  office  of  the  strike  committee. 

Again  these  two  men  faced  and  measured  each 
other  as  they  had  on  the  night  when  Sargent  had 
tried  to  bribe  Loyd. 

Sargent's  face  was  discolored  and  his  breath 
came  in  quick  gasps,  but  he  was  first  to  speak. 

"You  see,"  he  taunted  Loyd,  "what  tools  you 
have  to  work  with.  You  thought  you  could  hold 
them.  It  cost  you  fifty  thousand  dollars  to 
think.  With  a  lift  of  my  foot  I  knocked  over 
your  work  of  months." 

"Mr.  Sargent,"  said  Loyd  slowly,  "once  be- 
fore I  saw  you  so  close  to  death  that  your  life 
was  not  as  sure  as  the  turn  of  a  coin.  And  you 
would  be  dead  out  there  on  the  walk  now  if 
Father  Driscoll  had  not  saved  you.  I  do  not 
know  why  you  were  saved,  but  I  have  an  idea." 

"Is  it  interesting?"  queried  Sargent. 

Loyd  looked  at  the  thick  red  lines  under  the 


"THEY  HAVE  NOTHING  TO  EAT3   55 

skin  of  Sargent's  neck.  They  told  of  wrong  liv- 
ing and  an  overworked  heart. 

"I  think,"  he  pronounced  evenly,  "that  you 
will  not  die  by  any  man's  hand.  You're  a  brave 
man  and  you  hate  a  coward.  For  that  reason, 
I  think,  you'll  die  of  fright,  scared  to  death. 
That  will  be  hard  on  you." 

"Cheerful!"  snarled  Sargent.  "I'll  turn 
prophet,  too.  There'll  be  State  troops  here  to- 
morrow. I've  been  attacked  on  the  street  by 
rioting  strikers.  I  am  going  now  to  wire  the 
Governor.  Somebody  else  will  be  scared  to 
death  before  this  is  over."  He  stepped  quickly 
to  a  door  at  the  rear  and  out  into  the  alley. 

At  that  moment  Father  Driscoll,  followed  by 
Father  Lynch,  was  coming  in  at  the  front.  He 
sat  down  rather  heavily.  At  his  age  no  man 
passes  through  strong  excitement  without  being 
shaken. 

"Jimmie,"  said  he  shortly,  "are  you  sulking? 
Are  you,  then,  the  first  man  in  the  world  that  has 
had  to  go  on  with  his  appointed  work  in  the  face 
of  distrust  and  suspicion?" 

"I'm  afraid  it's  no  use  now,  Dean,"  said  Loyd 
dully.  "Sargent  has  just  gone  to  telegraph  for 
troops.  And  he'll  get  them,  too." 

The  Dean  rose  quickly,  with  a  new  grip  on 
himself. 

"Come,  Father  Lynch,"  he  said  briskly,  "it's 
time  you  were  at  the  station."  At  the  door,  he 
turned  to  Loyd,  saying: 


56 

"Jimmie,  soldiers  or  no  soldiers,  it  is  your  work 
to  get  these  disturbers  quietly  out  of  the  town." 

John  Sargent  was  standing  at  the  telegraph 
counter  in  the  railroad  station  writing  the  last 
of  three  telegrams.  One  was  to  the  Governor  of 
the  State,  another  to  the  Colonel  of  a  National 
Guard  regiment,  and  the  third,  more  important 
than  all,  was  to  a  politician  in  Albany  who  was 
said  to  be  above  colonels  and  governors. 

The  Dean  took  up  the  telegraph  pad  as  John 
Sargent  laid  it  down.  Under  the  latter's  eyes 
he  wrote  his  own  message  to  the  Governor:  a 
plain  message,  saying  that  the  trouble  at  Milton 
was  manufactured,  that  there  was  no  danger  and 
no  need  of  troops. 

John  Sargent  read  the  message,  as  the  Dean 
had  intended  he  should.  To  John  Sargent  it 
said,  in  effect,  that  he  lied. 

His  face  turned  livid  and  his  whole  body  shook 
with  rage,  so  that  he  had  to  struggle  for  speech. 

"So  you,"  he  stammered,  "you,  that  preach 
peace ;  you  are  going  to  fight  me !" 

The  Dean  signed  his  telegram,  counted  the 
words,  and  handed  it  with  the  money  to  the  clerk. 
Then  he  looked  down  an  instant  at  the  veins  of 
John  Sargent's  shaking  hands :  they  were  too  big. 

He  looked  curiously  into  Sargent's  face  and 
said: 

"Has  your  doctor  been  telling  you  nothing 
lately?"  ' 

Just  then  a  little  twitch  of  pain  shot  across 


"THEY  HAVE  NOTHING  TO  EAT'3   57 

John  Sargent's  left  breast.  He  winced.  It  was 
nothing,  that  little  pain:  he  had  felt  it  before, 
several  times.  But  that  two  men,  within  five 
minutes  of  each  other,  should  know  all  about  it, 
and  presume  to  tell  him  about  it,  was — annoying. 
He  turned  on  his  heel  and  walked  away. 

When  the  Dean  had  seen  Father  Lynch  on  his 
train,  he  walked  slowly  up  the  street  through  the 
thinning  crowds. 

The  day  was  nearly  over — a  day  that  might 
have  ended  in  tragedy  and  untold  sorrow  for  him 
and  his  people.  He  had  reached  out  his  hand 
and,  maybe,  saved  a  man's  life.  He  had  sent  his 
appeal  to  the  powers  of  State.  He  had  done 
the  little  that  God  had  put  near  his  hand.  In 
the  excitement  of  action  he  had  been  upheld, 
had  felt  that  he  was  doing  something. 

Now  he  looked  into  the  pinched,  weary-eyed 
faces  of  his  men,  and  he  saw  that,  after  all,  he 
had  done  nothing.  The  problem  was  as  it  was 
yesterday,  as  it  would  be  to-morrow.  They  were 
hungry  and  he  had  not  told  them,  could  not  tell 
them,  what  to  do. 

His  head  bowed  to  his  breast  as  he  walked,  and 
men  who  had  seen  him  save  a  life  and  calm  a 
fury  just  a  short  time  before,  wondered  if  the 
Dean  was  indeed  getting  old. 

In  his  heart  he  was  echoing  sadly  the  plaint 
of  the  disciples  in  the  desert  place:  What  shall 
I  say  to  these  people — For  they  have  nothing  to 
eat! 


CHAPTER  III 
"MY  BROTHER'S  KEEPER?" 

'IDuT,  if  the  State  is  only  a  policeman," 
argued  Father  Huetter,  "how  is  it  that 
we  find  its  power  working  only  for  the  protection 
of  the  one  side?" 

"Well?"  Dean  Driscoll  questioned,  for  he 
knew  that  the  young  priest  would  have  an  illus- 
tration ready. 

"For  instance,  when  John  Sargent — The  Mil- 
ton Machinery  Company — appealed  to  the 
Governor  for  troops  to  protect  the  plant  against 
the  strikers  here,  the  Governor  was  willing  to 
send  them.  He  would  have  sent  them  had  you 
not  personally  taken  the  matter  to  him  and 
shown  him  that  there  was  really  no  need  for  such 
protection." 

"Yes,"  the  Dean  admitted,  "he  would  have 
sent  them.  He  is  sworn  to  preserve  the  out- 
ward peace  of  the  law." 

"Put  it  on  that  ground,  then;  the  business  of 
the  State  is  solely  to  preserve  order.  How  much 
was  the  State  willing  to  spend  for  the  purpose? 
It  would  have  cost  five  thousand  dollars  for 
transportation,  and  one  thousand  dollars  a  day  to 

58 


"MY  BROTHER'S  KEEPER?33      59 

pay  and  keep  a  regiment  here.  The  State 
thought  itself  bound  to  spend  that  money  as  a 
preventive  measure.  Now,  suppose,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  you  had  telegraphed  the  Governor, 
saying:  'My  people  are  starving;  they  do  not 
need  soldiers,  they  need  bread;  they  are  des- 
perate, and  if  they  are  not  fed  there  will  be  riot 
and  destruction ;  instead  of  sending  soldiers,  send 
an  officer  of  the  State  here  to  distribute  the  thou- 
sand dollars  a  day  for  food  and  clothing;  that 
will  prevent  all  disorder.' 

"That  would  have  been  intelligent  prevention, 
and  protection  for  all.  But  what  would  have 
happened  if  you  had  sent  such  a  telegram?" 

"Well,"  said  the  Dean,  with  a  twinkle  under 
his  gray  brows,  "about  the  second  day,  I  would 
have  gotten  a  letter  from  the  Bishop  asking  me 
if  I  did  not  feel  that  I  was  getting  old." 

"And  you  would  have  been  headlined  in  the 
papers,"  Father  Huetter  went  on,  smiling,  "as 
the  priest  Socialist.  And  your  friends  would 
have  said — " 

"Oh,  they'd  be  charitable,"  broke  in  the  Dean, 
"they'd  hardly  go  farther  than  to  say  temporary 
madness,  though  some  might  go  so  far  as  to  say 
senile  decay." 

"And  yet  it  would  have  been  the  simplest  and 
wisest  measure  of  police  protection  that  could 
have  been  suggested." 

"You  are  right,  Father,  without  a  doubt. 
But  this  State,  and  it  is,  perhaps,  the  most  in- 


60          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

telligent  commonwealth  in  the  world,  is  not  yet 
educated  up  to  the  idea." 

"Then,  is  Socialism  right  when  it  tells  us  that 
the  State  must  be  forcibly  made  to  see  its  prob- 
lems?" 

"Socialism,  my  boy,  no  more  goes  to  the  root 
of  the  matter  of  Labor  and  Capital  in  this  State 
than  does  the  Fourth  Dimension.  Socialism  is  a 
philosophy  of  life,  founded  on  the  false  premise 
that  human  happiness  can  be  secured  through 
the  equal  distribution  of  money. 

"Rightly  or  wrongly,  this  Republic  is  founded 
on  the  directly  opposing  theory,  that  human  hap- 
piness can  only  be  secured  by  the  individual  do- 
ing that  which  he  wishes  to  do.  Almighty  God 
would  seem  to  have  recognized  that  theory,  in 
giving  men  free  will. 

"Rightly  or  wrongly,  again,  this  Republic  lives 
on  the  dogma  that  a  government  is  the  expres- 
sion of  the  will  of  the  majority  of  individuals. 
If  the  government  be  wrong  or  weak  or  faulty, 
then  the  blame  lies  on  the  majority  of  individ- 
uals. They  and  they  alone  have  the  remedy  in 
their  hands. 

"Both  of  these  fundaments  of  Americanism 
may  be  wrong.  But,  right  or  wrong,  they  are 
the  only  principles  upon  which  men  will  ever 
really  consent  to  be  governed." 

"But,"  said  Father  Huetter,  rising,  "how  can 
any  government  pretend  to  be  the  will  of  the 
people  when  it  permits  one  man,  John  Sargent, 


"MY  BROTHER'S  KEEPER?"      61 

one  individual,  by  his  greed  and  hardness  to 
force  suffering  upon  six  or  eight  thousand  in- 
dividuals, every  one  of  whom  is,  in  theory,  just 
as  important  to  the  government  as  is  he?  Do 
the  majority  of  individuals  in  this  State  wish 
that?" 

"No,"  the  Dean  agreed  sadly,  "it  is  a  great  and 
terrible  sin  upon  the  public  conscience.  But  it 
is  the  sin  of  indifference,  the  indifference  of  the 
great  and  careless  many  to  the  things  that  do  not 
immediately  concern  them.  The  public  con- 
science is  muddy,  and  slow  to  form  itself.  It  is 
ever  years  behind  the  advancing  complications  of 
life.  It  hears  about  this  strike,  knows  that  there 
is  suffering  here.  It  would  be  glad  to  put  an  end 
to  the  suffering  if  that  could  be  done  out  of  hand. 
A  small  part  of  the  public  goes  so  far  as  to  put 
its  hand  in  its  pocket  and  send  a  few  dollars  to 
Jim  Loyd  to  relieve  a  little  of  the  suffering. 
Then  it  goes  about  its  own  business,  the  business 
of  living  and  making  money  and  rearing  children 
and  dying.  It  is  a  busy  public.  Some  day  it 
will  rouse  itself  and  frame  an  effective  law  for- 
cing the  fair  and  peaceable  adjustment  of  all 
labor  troubles.  But  it  will  do  that  simply,  and 
as  a  matter  of  course,  because  it  occurs  as  the 
right  thing  to  do,  not  because  it  will  expect 
thereby  to  remove  the  discontent  and  suffering 
of  the  world. 

"Then  it  will  walk  away,  and  let  the  result  take 
care  of  itself.  It  is  a  loose  and  haphazard  way, 


62          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

indeed;  but  it  is  the  way  of  a  young  and  un- 
trammeled  people  that  refuses  to  be  governed 
more  than  is  absolutely  necessary.  Some  day, 
maybe,  this  people  will  be  stricken  terribly  for 
its  reckless  confidence  in  itself.  But,  dear  God 
in  His  mercy  soften  the  blow!  For  this  is  a 
beautiful  land,  a  young  David  among  the  na- 
tions! And  the  heart,  O  God!  The  heart  of 
this  people  is  good!"  The  tired  old  eyes  lifted 
and  glowed  warm  and  clear  with  his  love  for 
the  land  and  the  people  to  whom  he  had  given 
a  good  man's  all,  a  life  of  service. 

"And  I  sit  here,"  he  went  on,  shyly  dropping 
the  mask  over  his  feelings,  "prosing  to  you, 
young  man,  when  it's  long  past  your  bedtime, 
prosing  of  the  dulness  of  the  people,  the  great, 
bewildered,  many-headed  people;  and  I  do  not 
know  what  is  right  myself,  in  the  simplest  thing 
that  comes  to  my  hand. 

"I  kept  the  troops  away  from  here.  And  did 
I  do  right?  Now  you  saw  what  John  Sargent 
did  to-day.  Brought  in  two  hundred  deputy 
sheriffs  whom  he  had  forced  Sheriff  Beals  to 
swear  in.  That  will  cost  John  Beals  his  office  at 
the  next  election,  but  that  does  not  help  now. 
These  are  worse  than  soldiers  would  have  been, 
for  they  are  gathered  from  everywhere,  under 
no  discipline.  Sargent  can  get  them  to  do  any- 
thing. The  soldiers,  at  least,  would  have  obeyed 
only  their  officers.  I  fear  I  did  wrong." 

"No.     I'm  sure  you  were  wise,  Dean.     The 


"MY  BROTHER'S  KEEPER?"      63 

public  knows  that  these  men  are  the  hired  guards 
of  Sargent,  even  though  they  wear  the  badge  of 
the  county.  A  conflict  with  them  means  bitter- 
ness and  maybe  bloodshed,  but  it  will  not  dis- 
credit the  cause  of  the  strikers.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  the  men  fought  with  the  soldiers  they 
would  have  to  be  beaten  in  the  end  anyhow,  and 
it  would  lose  them  the  sympathy  of  the  State." 

"I  do  not  know,"  said  the  Dean.  "I  walked 
up  past  the  mill  in  the  dusk.  They  were  there, 
his  guards,  with  the  seal  and  the  authority  of  the 
law  upon  them,  slinging  their  rifles  carelessly 
and  parading  before  the  gates.  Every  move, 
every  look  of  theirs  was  provocation.  And  our 
own  men  and  boys  were  strung  along  on  the 
other  side  of  the  street,  standing  nervous  and 
cowed.  They  were  on  their  own  ground,  mind 
you;  in  their  own  town;  looking  gloomily  up  at 
the  mill  to  which  they  give  their  lives.  Yet 
every  man  was  feeling  somehow  that  he  was  an 
outlaw.  Now  you  do  not  have  to  impress  that 
upon  a  man  very  many  times  until  he  begins  to 
feel  like  agreeing  with  you,  and  making  it  good. 

"See  what  it  is,  now,  to  be  an  old  man,  and 
a  priest  of  peace,  and  yet  to  be  unregenerate !" 
Father  Huetter  bit  back  a  smile  as  the  Dean  con- 
fessed. "I  had  not  worked  my  life  out  in  that 
mill.  I  was  not  branded  an  outlaw  and  pro- 
voked. I  was  not  hungry.  Yet  there  was  not 
man  or  boy  there  with  blacker  anger  in  his  heart 
than  I  had.  If  anything  had  happened  in  that 


64          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

moment,  I  would  have  fought  blindly,  sense- 
lessly, with  nothing  to  fight  for,  nothing  to  win. 
So,  I  have  seen  men  fight  the  torment  of  death. 

"Forgive  me,"  he  said  quickly,  "I  was  beside 
myself.  Think  of  it.  I  know  that  there  is  not 
one  of  those  hungry,  despairing  boys  in  that 
crowd  to-night  who  is  not  better  off,  richer,  in 
his  strong  hands  and  his  clean  heart,  than  is  John 
Sargent.  But  did  I  think  of  that  when  the 
anger  swept  over  me?  How  can  they?  I  fear. 
How  long  can  they  hold  themselves?" 

"I  think  they  are  doing  wonderfully,"  said 
Father  Huetter  quietly.  "Loyd  has  them  in 
hand  again  as  well  as  ever.  And  he  is  every- 
where. He  never  worked  ten  hours  a  day  in  the 
mill  as  furiously  as  he  works  twenty  now  at  this." 

"That  is  well,"  nodded  the  Dean.  "His  heart 
needs  work  in  these  days.  It's  the  best  thing  he 
could  get  now,  plenty  of  it.  And  go  you  to  your 
bed  now.  I've  talked  you  blind-sleepy  with  my 
prating,  and  you've  your  early  morning  ahead  of 
you.  I  must  read  something,  for  the  peace  of 
my  mind." 

"I  guess  I  will  say  good-night,  Dean."  The 
young  priest  swung  out  of  the  room  and  went 
lightly  up  the  stairs  to  his  own  quarters. 

The  Dean  turned  to  his  book  and  dropped  into 
his  characteristic  reading  attitude.  He  sat  like 
a  boy  at  a  school  desk,  one  long  arm  stretched 
out  idly  across  the  desk,  the  other  hand  cupped 
over  his  eyes  and  supporting  his  head.  Under 


"MY  BROTHER'S  KEEPER?'      65 

the  seventy-four  years  of  life  and  hard  work  he 
carried  a  boy's  fresh  heart  and  a  boy's  direct,  un- 
conscious way  of  things.  He  read  from  old 
Ramon  de  Monte  Brazo  peering  down  from  his 
monastic  eyrie  in  the  Pyrenees  at  the  doings  of 
Simon  de  Montfort  and  the  Albigenses  on  the 
plains  of  Provence. 

The  ancient  monk  was  a  faint-heart,  it  seemed. 
He  saw  the  whole  of  Christianity  disrupted  by 
the  schism  of  these  terrible  people:  princes  and 
kings  fell  away  from  the  Church  and  the  world 
tumbled  about  men's  ears.  Surely  it  was  the  end 
of  all  things.  See  now,  the  Dean  chided  with 
the  freedom  of  old  friendship,  this  it  is  to  be  of 
little  faith.  You  are  dead  and  dust  and  forgot- 
ten, and  so  are  they.  Worse  than  they  have 
come  and  gone  and  will  come  again  and  go,  and 
the  great,  lumbering  world  goes  on,  with  the 
shoulder  of  God  keeping  it  in  the  way.  So  shall 
I  be  dead  and  dust,  with  my  worrying  and  my 
people,  without  even  a  little  black-letter  book  to 
tell  what  disturbed  me.  John  Sargent  and  Jim 
Loyd,  Autocrat  and  Socialist,  trying  to  split  the 
earth  between  them  and  then  lying  down  to  give 
back  their  shares  of  the  dust  of  it.  And  I,  a 
blind  man  poking  futilely  with  a  stick,  thinking 
I  am  helping  or  hindering! 

His  eyes  stayed  upon  the  book,  but  his  mind 
strayed  away  to  far  countries.  It  was  the  hour 
when  he  loved  to  sit  alone  and  feel  the  peace  of 
sleep  and  forgetfulness  settle  down  over  his  peo- 


66          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

pie  and  his  little  city.  Father  Tenney  once  said 
that  the  Dean  never  went  to  his  own  bed  until 
he  had  tucked  in  the  covers  over  the  town  of  Mil- 
ton. 

All  men  in  Milton  knew  his  custom,  knew  that 
so  long  as  the  light  burned  in  the  little  library 
the  door  was  open,  knew  that  Father  Driscoll, 
himself,  would  come  to  the  door  to  greet.  And 
men  came,  men  who  did  not  find  it  easy  to  come 
in  the  broad,  glaring  day.  Men  came  whose 
faces  were  not  seen  in  church.  Men  came  with 
trouble  and  shame  and  sorrow,  for  joy  does  not 
come,  hesitating,  in  the  night. 

Their  steps  were  not  the  hurrying,  frightened 
steps  that  come  from  the  bedside  of  sudden  sick- 
ness. They  were  steps  that  lagged,  and  stopped, 
perhaps,  in  front  of  the  door,  and  then  went  on 
past;  only  to  return  still  more  slowly,  and  hesi- 
tate, and  then  step  quickly,  with  sudden-caught 
resolution,  up  to  the  door. 

A  step  came  now,  one  different  from  other 
steps;  a  quiet  step,  of  a  man  not  courting  obser- 
vation, yet  determined,  as  of  a  man  with  fixed 
purpose.  The  Dean,  listening,  did  not  recog- 
nize that  step  among  the  other  types  that  he 
knew. 

The  short,  quick  ring  brought  the  Dean  to  the 
door,  and  he  extended  his  hand  to  draw  into  the 
circle  of  the  hall  light  a  man — John  Sargent! 

The  two  greeted  mechanically  and  then  stood 
facing  each  other  a  moment:  the  Dean  puzzled. 


"MY  BROTHER'S  KEEPER?"      67 

but  frank  and  ready  to  meet  his  man  upon  what- 
ever ground;  Sargent  scowling  fixedly,  his  pur- 
pose set  upon  his  face. 

The  Dean  quickly  remembered  himself,  and 
led  the  way  into  the  library.  He  saw  that  Sar- 
gent was  seated  comfortably,  and  then  made 
business  of  turning  his  own  chair  away  from  the 
desk  and  lowering  himself  into  it,  giving  the  man 
full  time  for  his  opening. 

"When  this  strike  started,"  Sargent  began, 
without  address  or  preface,  "I  kept  in  touch  with 
it  from  New  York.  Day  and  night  for  nearly 
three  months  I  had  a  grip  on  it  by  the  end  of  a 
wire.  I  should  have  come  here  in  the  begin- 
ning— but  never  mind  that.  Long  before  the 
end  of  that  time,  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
this  was  no  ordinary  strike.  It  was  not  the 
while-you-wait,  flash-in-the-pan  sort  that  the 
unions  order,  just  for  a  chance  to  curse  the  men 
who  have  the  brains  to  make  money." 

Father  Driscoll  shifted  easily  back  into  his 
chair,  prepared  to  listen  at  length. 

"It  was  an  intelligent  strike,"  Sargent  con- 
tinued his  course  of  reasoning.  "It  attended 
strictly  to  the  business  of  striking,  and  it  did 
nothing  else.  I  said  to  myself:  'That  is  a  one- 
man  strike.  No  union  or  set  of  men  could  han- 
dle it  that  way.  There  is  one  big  man  with 
brains  behind  it.'  I  wired  my  people  here: 

"  'There  is  one  man  behind  that  strike.  Who 
is  he?' 


68          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"  'Loyd,'  they  said. 

"  'Get  him,'  I  ordered. 

"  'Can't  be  done,'  they  said ;  'too  big  and  too 
straight.' ' 

Father  Driscoll  nodded  sharply. 

"There  is  no  such  man,"  Sargent  came  back 
with  a  rasp.  "No  man  lives  who  cannot  be 
bought,  for  something." 

The  old  priest  straightened  tensely  in  his 
chair.  But  he  said  nothing.  He  wished  to  hear 
the  rest. 

"Then  I  came  here  myself,"  Sargent  took  up 
his  story  again,  "to  look  Jim  Loyd  over;  to  get 
his  price.  There  was  nothing  in  the  mill  to  offer 
him.  But  every  man  needs  money ;  always  needs 
money.  I  offered  him  fifty  thousand  dollars. 
You've  heard  that,  I  suppose?" 

The  Dean  sat  like  a  statue,  with  no  expression 
in  his  face  except  that  of  contempt  and  disgust 
of  the  man's  coarse  cynicism. 

"You  wouldn't  say  so,  of  course,"  Sargent 
commented. 

"And  it  got  him!  I  tell  you,  it  got  him!"  he 
broke  out,  bringing  his  hand  down  on  the  arm  of 
his  chair.  "Why,  in  another  minute  he'd  have 
been  reaching  out  his  hand  for  it!  And  then 
he  thought  of  something,  and  stopped.  And 
then  he  wanted  to  kill  me.  Cheerful  beggar! 
Then  he  rushed  out  of  the  office  like  a  madman. 

"What  was  it  he  had  thought  of?     That's 


"MY  BROTHER'S  KEEPER?"      69 

what  I  wanted  to  know.  They  had  told  me  he 
was  a  Socialist.  That  put  me  off  the  trail.  I 
knew  I  could  buy  any  professional  Socialist  in 
the  world  for  half  the  money. 

"Then  I  found  out  he  was  a  Catholic,  and  I 
said — phutt — I  might  have  known!  You  never 
can  tell  when  a  Catholic  is  going  to  remember 
something,  and  back  up  on  you. 

"Then  I  found  that  he  was  something  of  a 
protege  of  yours,  that  he  owed  you  a  good  deal; 
and  I  said — " 

"My  dear  Mr.  Sargent,"  interrupted  the 
Dean,  elaborating  his  politeness,  "you  have 
found  out  a  great  deal,  but  your  information 
is  not  all  exact.  Jim  Loyd  does  not  owe  me 
anything — Jim  Loyd  pays  his  debts." 

Sargent  winced  and  stared.  Two  things  had 
struck  him.  He  was  a  gentleman  in  the  house 
of  another  gentleman,  and  that  other  had  had  a 
chance  to  note  pointedly  for  him  a  lack  of  polite- 
ness on  his  part.  Also,  what  the  Dean  had  em- 
phasized about  Jim  Loyd  paying  his  debts 
sounded  oddly  like  a  threat,  and  it  puzzled  him. 
He  did  not  know  what  it  meant. 

"Well,  I  suppose  I  ought  to  have  addressed 
you  as  Father,  but  I'm  not  used  to  — " 

"Never  mention  it,"  the  Dean  waved  the 
apology  aside,  "it  is  purely  a  matter  of — taste. 
You  were  saying — ?" 

Under  the  Dean's  cool  badgering,  Sargent  was 


70          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

losing  his  temper  and,  with  it,  the  control  of  the 
conversation ;  and  he  knew  it.  But  he  picked  up 
the  thread  again  surlily: 

"I  said  then,  and  I  was  right:  'Jim  Loyd's 
head  did  not  furnish  the  brains  for  this  strike.' 
There  was  something  older  and  bigger  and  wiser 
than  Jim  Loyd  in  this.  He  is  brave  enough,  and 
bold  enough,  I'll  give  him  that.  But  he  is  not 
steady  or  sure  enough  in  purpose.  There  was 
something  powerful,  and  gray,  and  deep-in-the- 
root  behind  him.  And  that  was  the  power  of 
the  Catholic  Church.  That  was  you." 

"Ah,"  said  the  Dean  smoothly,  "and  have  you 
perhaps  brought  the  fifty  thousand  with  you,  for 
me?" 

"No."  Sargent  snapped.  "I  haven't  got 
anything  that  you  want.  I  know  that.  I  am 
not  a  fool." 

"Um!"  The  Dean  clamped  his  teeth  down 
upon  his  anger.  When  he  answered,  it  was  in 
a  voice  of  smoothly  cutting  steel. 

"Mr.  Sargent,"  he  said,  "I  think  you  would  do 
well  to  come  to  the  point.  I  am  an  old  man,  but 
I  regret  that  my  temper  is  not  what  it  should 
be." 

Sargent  was  suddenly  steadied  by  the  tone  of 
the  old  priest.  He  had  not  come  here  to  quarrel. 
He  knew  how  wrong  and  utterly  indefensible 
was  his  position  with  this  old  man  whose  life  and 
works  challenged  everything  that  John  Sargent 
was  and  did. 


"MY  BROTHER'S  KEEPER?"      71 

"At  least,"  he  said,  breathing  quickly  in  the  ef- 
fort to  recover  himself,  "your  Church  and  you 
are  bound  to  listen  to  reason.  I  put  it  this  way : 
Your  Church  is  the  Church  of  the  poor,  of  the 
masses.  Yes.  A  man  does  not  have  to  be  a 
student  to  know  that.  All  he  has  to  do  is  to  get 
up  early  enough  on  a  Sunday  to  see  them  hurry- 
ing to  Mass.  There's  something  there  that  they 
want  very  badly,  or  my  men  wouldn't  climb  out 
of  their  bed  to  go  after  it.  They'd  send  the  chil- 
dren after  it,  or  tell  you  to  send  your  sermon 
around  with  the  Sunday  paper. 

"But  the  masses,  the  people,  as  they  call  them- 
selves, never  perpetuate  anything.  They  roll 
and  they  shift  forever:  it's  history.  And  the 
history  of  your  Church  is  that  she  has  lasted  all 
this  time  because  she  had  the  wisdom  to  stand 
by  the  things  that  last,  the  powers  upon  which 
civilization  rests.  The  right  and  the  strength  of 
civilization  stands  on  the  inviolability  of  private 
property.  Government  is  organized  and  sup- 
ported for  just  that  one  thing.  And  I  tell  you 
that  in  this  country  just  now,  more  than  in  any 
other  place  or  time,  your  Church,  for  her  very 
life,  has  got  to  stand  by  the  order  of  things  or  go 
down  with  that  order. 

"I  am  no  ranter.  I  make  money  discounting 
the  scares  and  the  bugbears  of  other  men.  But 
I  can  see  what  is  coming.  Socialism,  ramping 
through  this  country,  is  going  to  throw  it  into 
the  most  terrible  war  that  men  have  ever  seen. 


72          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

The  powers  of  order  will  fight  to  the  last  ditch 
for  the  rights  of  man — the  real  rights  of  man; 
the  right  of  a  man  to  use  his  brains  and  his  work ; 
the  right  of  a  man  to  own  what  he  has  gained, 
and  to  give  it  to  his  children.  These  powers  of 
order  may  go  down.  Our  civilization  and  all 
that  it  has  secured  to  us  may  go  down.  But  if 
they  do,  if  they  do,  your  Church  will  go  down 
with  them. 

"Does  a  mob  stop  at  one  thing?  I  tell  you, 
not  a  rag  of  a  thing  that  is  old,  or  time-honored, 
or  blood-earned,  will  be  left.  Your  Church  must 
stand  with  the  strength  of  property  and  of  pri- 
vate rights  and  hold  back  this  crisis,  or  she  will 
go  down  with  the  crash  of  the  rest." 

The  Dean  was  interested.  It  seemed  that  he 
had  heard  snatches  of  something  like  this  some- 
where before. 

"Your  history,"  he  said,  smiling  a  little  grimly, 
"does  you  credit,  Mr.  Sargent.  Your  prophecy 
does  no  credit  to  the  good  sense  and  the  brains 
of  American  men  and  women.  But  it  seems  that 
I  have  heard  something  very  like  it  before,  heard 
it,  now  I  remember,  from  the  Socialists  here  on 
the  streets  of  Milton  on  Labor  Day.  But  both 
you  and  the  Socialists  forget  one  thing:  the 
Catholic  Church  is  the  one  institution  on  this 
earth  whose  existence  is  assured.  Any  calcula- 
tion, any  prophecy  from  either  of  you  that  does 
not  count  in  that  fact  is  bound  to  be  faulty." 

The  simple,  unarguing  faith  of  the  big,  keen- 


"MY  BROTHER'S  KEEPER?"      73 

eyed  old  man  angered  Sargent,  as  simple,  unan- 
swering  obstacles  always  anger  men  of  his  dom- 
ineering type.  He  broke  out  into  what  he  had 
really  come  to  say. 

"Let  that  stand,"  he  said.  "I'm  not  inter- 
ested. You  want  the  point.  The  other  day  you 
blocked  me  when  I  asked  the  Governor  for  the 
protection  of  the  State  troops.  To-day  I  had 
to  buy  protection  from  the  county.  This  even- 
ing you  walked  up  past  my  mill.  Your  men — 
they  are  my  men,  for  I  feed  them  and  give  them 
a  chance  to  live,  when  they  are  willing  to  take  it 
— were  grouped  along  there  by  the  hundred, 
looking  for  a  chance  to  attack  my  property. 
You,  by  your  very  presence  there,  were  giving 
them  countenance. 

"You  have  furnished  Jim  Loyd  with  the  brains 
and  the  steady  guiding  power  for  this  strike 
from  the  beginning.  You  preach  peace.  Your 
Church  stands  for  law  and  order.  And  yet,  if 
you  do  not  actually  incite  rebellion,  you,  at  least, 
give  it  strength.  Not  only  do  you  give  it  the 
help  of  your  own  influence,  which  is  great,  but 
you  put  the  power  of  your  Church  behind  it. 
You  make  it  a  holy  war.  And  do  I  not  know 
what  it  does  for  those  men?  Do  I  not  know  that 
you  could  go  out  upon  your  altar  any  Sunday 
and  say  ten  words  that  would  break  the  back- 
bone of  this  strike? 

"And  yet  with  this  power  and  this  responsi- 
bility in  your  hands,  what  do  you  do  with  it? 


74          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

You  use  it  to  encourage  lawlessness,  to  continue 
disorder  and  strife. 

"I  have  brought  men  in  here  to  protect  my 
property.  And  protect  it  and  me  they  wilL 
And  if  anything  happens,  you,  you,  do  you  un- 
derstand? will  be  responsible.  You  have  all 
tried  to  ruin  me.  If  I  lose  this  strike,  I  am  a 
ruined  man.  And  I  will  not  lose  it.  I  swear 
I  will  not  lose  it." 

The  Dean  rose  to  his  feet  with  a  snap.  The 
seventy-odd  years  slipped  away  from  his  shoul- 
ders, and  he  towered  over  John  Sargent,  his 
whole  form  shaking  with  indignation  at  the  con- 
torted and  monstrous  charges  that  he  had  heard. 
But  temper  and  voice  were  well  in  hand  when 
he  spoke. 

"You  talk  of  lawlessness  and  disorder,  Mr. 
Sargent.  In  the  name  of  truth,  has  there  been  a 
single  lawless  act,  a  wild  word,  that  has  not  been 
directly,  directly  I  say,  incited  by  you?  You 
brought  these  men  here  to-day,  not  to  protect 
your  property — it  needed  no  protection.  You 
brought  them  here  for  the  one  purpose,  to  pro- 
voke the  strikers  to  a  fight.  You  want  one  short, 
bloody  conflict  that  you  think  will  turn  the  older 
men  against  the  strike. 

"Your  plan  is  clear.  It  is  logical.  But  re- 
member, there  is  just  one  name  for  that  plan. 
And  when  you  have  made  it  and  go  to  execute  it 
you  are  outside  the  protection  of  all  law. 

"You  talk  of  Socialism.    Who,  I  ask  you,  who 


"MY  BROTHER'S  KEEPER?"      75 

brought  the  agitators  here  on  Labor  Day  to  in- 
cite riot  and  destruction?  Who  but  you,  by 
your  own  act,  tried  to  provoke  the  crowd  to  vio- 
lence?" 

"I  did  that,"  said  Sargent  brazenly,  "and  I 
will  do  anything  else,  anything,  I  say,  to  save 
myself  from  ruin." 

"Sir,  you  talk  of  ruin,  loss  of  money  to  you,  as 
though  it  were  the  end  of  the  world.  I  saw  your 
father,  forty  years  ago,  when  you  were  a  child, 
down  there  by  the  river,  where  your  big  turbine 
wheel  is  now,  blowing  his  forge  with  his  own  arm. 
He  did  not  have  the  money  to  buy  his  iron.  He 
built  the  first  of  the  machines  that  have  made 
your  fortune  with  his  own  hands,  piece  by  piece. 
He  had  to  give  a  lien  on  it  for  the  materials. 
And  do  you  tell  me  that  he  wras  not  better  off 
then,  a  richer  man,  than  you  to-day,  with  mil- 
lions going  through  your  hands? 

"If  you  were  ruined  to-morrow  would  you  ever 
feel  the  gnaw  of  hunger?  Would  a  child  of 
yours  ever  look  up  at  you  with  starvation  talk- 
ing through  its  little  cheek  bones? 

"Man,  have  you  lost  all  measure  of  the  worth 
of  things?  Do  you  not  know  that  it  is  a  greater 
thing  in  the  sight  of  God  and  man  that  one  child 
should  go  to  bed  hungry  to-night  in  this  town 
than  that  all  your  money  should  be  taken  from 
you?" 

"Do  you  want  me  to  feed  them,  and  thus  arm 
them  against  myself?"  Sargent  said  harshly. 


76          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"They  are  not  fighting  you.  The  men  are 
fighting  for  themselves,  their  right  to  live  as  free 
men.  And  the  women  and  the  children  suffer — 
that  is  their  part — that  other  women  and  chil- 
dren, to  come,  may  not  have  to  suffer  as  do  they. 
Put  aside  all  talk  of  Socialists  and  future  and 
classes.  Three  thousand  women  and  children 
went  to  their  beds  unfed  this  night,  all  to  save 
you  the  loss  of  your  toy,  money!" 

"I  didn't  make  the  condition,"  growled  Sar- 
gent. "It's  the  fault  of  their  men.  Am  I  my 
brother's  keeper?" 

"In  God's  name!"  said  the  Dean,  swinging 
about,  his  face  ablaze.  "For  your  soul,  do  not 
say  those  words.  Do  you  know  who  said  them? 
Do  you  know?" 

Sargent  got  to  his  feet.  He  was  dazed  by  the 
pain  and  horror  in  the  priest's  voice. 

"They're  in  your  Bible,  somewhere,  I  suppose. 
I  don't  know,"  he  said  slowly. 

"They  are  the  words  that  Cain  muttered  to 
God,  when  he  had  murdered  his  brother.  And 
after  that  he  said:  el  am  accursed  .  .  .  Every 
man  that  findeth  me  shall  slay  me." 

The  two  men  stood  eye  to  eye,  in  silence,  un- 
til John  Sargent  could  stand  it  no  longer.  His 
eyes  fell,  and  he  stood  nervously  rubbing  the 
backs  of  his  clenched  hands  together. 

Out  of  the  stillness  of  the  night,  into  the  still- 
ness of  the  room  came  the  sound  of  a  single  shot. 

It  was  a  distant  shot,  but  in  the  absolute  si- 


"MY  BROTHER'S  KEEPER?33      77 

lence  it  spoke  unnamed  terror.  For  in  it  there 
was  the  ring  of  death. 

"It  has  come!"  the  Dean  groaned.     "I  feel  it." 

John  Sargent  reached  for  his  hat  and,  without 
a  word,  hurried  from  the  room  and  the  house. 

The  Dean,  almost  mechanically,  turned  to  his 
desk,  reaching  for  the  oil-stocks  and  stole.  He 
did  not  remember  his  hat. 

A  few  long,  swift  strides  down  the  street 
brought  him  up  with  the  shorter  man  ahead  of 
him.  Together  they  hurried  down  into  State 
Street.  Strange  companions,  with  strangely  dif- 
ferent thoughts  and  motives,  yet  both  impelled 
in  the  one  direction  by  the  same  thing. 

The  effect  of  that  single  shot  had  been  a  thing 
to  inspire  awe.  It  showed  how  nervously  and 
how  little  men  rested  in  those  nights.  A  little, 
sharp,  staccato  sound  it  had  been;  the  bark  of 
a  sawed-off  rifle.  In  an  ordinary  night  not 
twenty  people  in  the  little  city  would  have  re- 
membered hearing  it.  Now,  at  the  sound  of  it 
men  were  hurrying  out  already  from  hallways 
and  from  the  side  streets,  half-dressed,  anxious, 
alert  men.  Hardly  a  word  was  spoken.  Men 
saved  their  breath  for — they  knew  not  what. 

It  is  a  fearsome  thing  to  see  men  troop  to- 
gether, out  of  nowhere,  in  silence,  in  the  night; 
and  to  see  how  a  common  impulse,  without 
prompting,  leads  them  together  and  irresistibly 
to  the  point  they  seek.  Does  soul  speak  to  soul, 
or  is  there  a  medium,  more  subtle  than  the  air 


78          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

with  its  sound  waves,  that  carries  vibrations  of 
excited  thought  from  mind  to  mind? 

"Do  you  feel  it?"  said  the  Dean  in  a  low  tone 
to  the  man  at  his  side.  "The  power  of  a  thou- 
sand minds  working  on  the  one  thing.  I  had 
rather  face  that  crowd  howling,  with  guns  in 
their  hands,  than  face  them  so,  silent,  with  their 
naked  hands." 

Sargent  said  nothing. 

Now  as  they  got  farther  down  the  street  and 
the  crowd  thickened  so  that  progress  was  slower, 
a  murmur  came  up  over  the  heads  of  the  crowd, 
meeting  them. 

It  was  a  word,  at  first,  a  name,  that  ran  leap- 
ing from  lip  to  lip,  one  word — Loyd. 

Then  there  were  three  words — Loyd  is  killed; 
words  that  seemed  to  paralyze  the  lips  that 
passed  them  on.  For  a  block  or  two  there  was 
nothing  more:  only  the  blanched  faces  and  the 
angry  breath  of  men  and  those  three  words — 
Loyd  is  killed. 

Farther  on,  there  were  more  words,  confusing 
words,  contradicting  words.     Men  gasped  and 
sweated  to  get  them  right — "Not  Jim  Loyd— 
not  Jim — Harry — young  brother — Harry  Loyd, 
not  Jim." 

A  crowd  was  coming  now  from  the  opposite 
direction.  It  was  a  procession  that  came  on  up 
the  street.  Men  walked  slowly,  packed  to- 
gether, with  bare  heads.  A  useless  ambulance 
tried  to  clang  its  way  through  the  crowd.  A 


"MY  BROTHER'S  KEEPER?"      79 

stalled  trolley  car  stood  helpless,  shedding  a  pale, 
yellowish  light  about  it.  There  was  no  going  or 
moving  for  any. 

But  the  word  came  clear  now.  In  hurried, 
bated  whispers,  true ;  but  plain,  very  plain. 

Harry  Loyd,  Jim  Loyd's  young  brother,  had 
been  up  River  Road.  All  the  world  could  have 
told  you  that  Harry  had  been  spending  the  even- 
ing with  Nonie  Gaylor.  The  lad  had  walked 
whistling  from  Nome's  doorstep,  to  his  death,  in 
front  of  the  main  gate  of  the  mill.  Men,  run- 
ning at  the  shot,  had  found  him  there — dead  as 
they  reached  him — lying,  face  down,  in  the  mid- 
dle of  the  paved  roadway.  The  news  was  very 
explicit,  now. 

They  had  found  the  guards  lined  behind  the 
barred  gates,  guns  ready  at  every  knot-hole. 

From  that  packed  body  of  men  that  moved 
with  slow,  shuffling  step  up  the  street  there  came 
a  confused,  rising  murmur.  A  murmur  that 
asked  questions,  but  did  not  wait  for  answers. 
A  murmur  that  rose  and  fell  and  rose  again,  ever 
a  little  higher.  It  was  a  murmur  that  told  that 
the  crowd  was  coming  back  from  stupor  and 
stunned  unbelief.  In  another  minute  they 
would  be  hearing  their  own  question,  and  look- 
ing for  the  answer. 

Shrilly  and  swiftly  the  questions  ran  up  and 
down  the  street,  more  swiftly  than  had  run  news 
before  them.  Shrilly  the  questions  rose  one 
above  the  other,  as  flame  leaps  above  flame,  un- 


80          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

til  men  stood,  at  last,  to  listen:  and  to  answer. 

Of  what  use  to  kill  John  Sargent's  hired 
guards?  They  had  no  interest  in  this  matter. 
Of  what  good  to  burn  the  mill?  Could  the  mill 
suffer? 

One  man  is  guilty!  Where  is  he?  He  was 
seen  to  leave  the  mill  to-night,  came  the  answer. 
Did  he  go  back  to  the  mill?  He  did  not.  He  is 
still  in  the  town,  then?  On  the  street,  maybe? 

Some  man  will  meet  him:  some  man  will  put 
hands,  maybe,  upon  John  Sargent.  What  will 
that  man  do  who  puts  hand  on  John  Sargent? 
Hold  him  for  the  law?  There  is  no  law,  for 
John  Sargent. 

What  will  that  man  do?  He  will  kill  John 
Sargent,  with  his  hands.  Kill — with  his  hands 
— with  his  hands — with  his  hands! 

The  cry  rose  shriller  and  shriller  until  it  was 
no  longer  articulate.  It  was  a  whine :  the  whine 
of  a  wire  in  the  tempest.  But  the  meaning  all 
men  knew:  the  man  who  first  puts  hands  on  John 
Sargent  shall  kill  him. 

The  Dean  'turned  to  the  man  who  had  been  at 
his  elbow.  He  was  gone.  The  man  never  lived 
who  was  brave  enough  to  face  a  thousand  men, 
his  fellows,  each  wishing  to  kill  him  with  bare 
hands.  It  is  a  death  no  man  can  think  of. 

And,  a  few  moments  before,  John  Sargent 
had  heard  the  words  of  Cain:  Every  man  that 
findeth  me  shall  slay  me. 

The  Dean  pushed  down  through  the  crowd  to 


"MY  BROTHER'S  KEEPER?"      81 

meet  the  center  of  that  body  of  packed  men  walk- 
ing slow.  Somehow  they  made  way  for  him  by 
the  side  of  the  mattress  on  which  they  carried  the 
boy. 

Jim  Loyd  had  said:  "I  will  bring  him  home 
so."  And  no  man  had  dared  to  question. 

Step  by  step,  his  white  head  showing  all  above 
the  crowd,  the  priest  walked  behind  Jim  Loyd, 
who  walked  unseeing,  unhearing,  his  hand  lightly 
touching  the  shoulder  of  his  dead  brother.  This 
had  been  his  baby  brother.  He  had  carried  him 
in  his  arms.  And  he  had  only  left  the  four-year- 
old  baby  down  to  run  for  himself,  when  he  him- 
self, at  twelve,  had  gone  into  John  Sargent's 
mill,  to  get  bread  for  them  both. 

"And,  dear  God !"  the  Dean  breathed,  "I  said 
to  that  man :  'Jim  Loyd  always  pays  his  debts !' 
How  little  a  piece  of  the  web  of  life  do  we  see! 
And  a  word — what  a  word  may  mean!" 

Slowly  they  came  now  up  to  the  house,  in  a 
side  street,  where  Jim  Loyd  lived. 

When  they  had  seen  the  door  close  upon  its 
dead  and  its  sorrow,  men  went  back  to  the  cor- 
ner of  the  wide  street.  Their  words  were  simple 
and  elemental,  as  the  talk  of  men  is  like  to  be 
when  they  have  seen  their  dead. 

They  judged  John  Sargent  there,  without 
heat,  without  temper.  He  was  guilty.  The 
law  could  not  reach  him.  He  must  die  by  the 
hands  of  one  of  them.  It  is  a  terrible  thing 
when  men  in  cool  dispassion  decide  to  kill. 


82          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

When  many  men,  a  thousand  men,  so  decree, 
it  would  seem  that  the  object  must  die,  withered 
by  their  very  thought. 

But  when  the  judgment  was  passed,  the  whine 
of  the  scent  rose  again.  It  demanded  to  know 
where  John  Sargent  had  been  seen — who  had 
seen  him.  Men  whispered  that  he  had  been  with 
Father  Driscoll. 

Then  the  Dean,  stepping  upon  a  horse-block 
at  the  corner,  in  the  full  light  of  an  arc  lamp, 
spoke.  They  were  not  ready  to  listen.  They 
thought  they  knew  what  he  would  say.  But  no 
man  was  ready  to  say  that  he  had  not  the  right. 

"Murder,"  he  said  slowly,  "has  been  done  this 
night.  God,  He  alone,  knows  what  it  may  lead 
to. 

"Murder,  such  as  was  done  first  by  Cain. 
And  do  you  know,  do  you  remember,  what  Cain 
said  to  God  when  he  was  charged  and  judged? 
Do  you  remember?"  His  voice  rang  out  to 
catch  the  farthest  of  the  crowd.  "He  said, 
'Every  man  that  findeth  me  shall  kill  me.'  You 
are  saying,  'Let  the  first  man  who  finds  him  kill 
him.' 

"And  what  said  the  God  Almighty  of  Justice 
and  of  Judgment? 

"God  said,  'Whosover  killeth  Cain,  vengeance 
shall  be  taken  upon  him  sevenfold.  And  a 
mark  was  put  upon  Cain,  lest  any  man  who 
found  him  should  kill  him.' 

"And  I  say  to  you :     'A  mark  is  set  this  night 


"MY  BROTHER'S  KEEPER?'      83 

upon  John  Sargent,  so  that  no  man  shall  kill 
him.  He  shall  not  die  by  your  hands.' ' 

He  stepped  down  from  the  stone  and  made 
his  quiet  way  up  the  street  toward  the  church. 

Men  looked  after  him — looked  at  each  other — 
stood  where  they  were,  thinking. 


CHAPTER  IV 
THE  DEAN'S  JOURNEY 

Dean  of  Milton  was  slowly  and  a  little 
painfully  climbing  the  great  ranks  of  steps 
leading  up  to  the  doors  of  the  State  Capitol. 
He  had  not  been  abed  at  all  the  night  before, 
and  his  knees  were  stiff  from  the  long  down  jour- 
ney of  the  morning.  Very  early  in  the  morning 
he  had  said  his  Mass  for  the  repose  of  the  soul 
of  a  boy  whom  he  had  seen  carried  home  dead 
in  the  night.  After  the  Mass  Father  Driscoll's 
prayer  had  turned,  from  the  boy  who  had  gone 
blithely,  with  clean  hands,  to  his  death,  to  the 
living  men  whom  he  had  seen  during  that  night. 

He  had  seen  them,  boys  and  men  whom  he 
had  known  since  babyhood,  with  murder  in  their 
eyes;  boys  and  men  whose  little  histories  of 
schooling  and  working  and  living  were  so  like 
each  other,  so  many  times  repeated,  so  like  the 
figures  of  a  pattern,  that  he  had  often  thought 
he  could  have  read  all  by  one:  in  a  moment  he 
had  seen  them  turned  into  raging  furies,  who 
whined  to  kill. 

For  the  time,  he  had  held  them  back.  Who 
could  tell  what  instant  that  feeble  leash  of  his 

84 


THE  DEAN'S  JOURNEY  85 

would  break?  Whose  hand  would  hold  them 
then? 

In  the  simple,  unblinking  way  of  a  boy,  the 
old  priest  had  reviewed  the  case,  for  the  benefit 
of  Omniscience.  The  men  were  hungry,  their 
children  were  hungry,  he  explained.  They  were 
desperate.  They  had  seen  their  brother  dead. 
The  powers  that  were  sworn  to  protect  them 
were  turned  against  them.  Dear  God,  give 
them  grace  of  patience.  Stay  their  hands. 
Give  me  grace  of  strength  and  wisdom  to  know 
what  is  best  to  do. 

The  Dean  had  risen  from  his  knees  and  gone 
straight  in  to  where  the  telephone  hung  in  the 
lower  hall  of  the  house.  Calling  the  telegraph 
office,  he  had  dictated  a  telegram  to  the  Governor 
of  the  State,  asking  for  an  interview  at  twelve 
that  day. 

The  instant  transition,  from  the  eternal  sim- 
plicity of  his  prayer  to  the  up-to-the-minute 
practicality  of  his  action,  was  characteristic  of 
this  old  priest,  as  it  is  of  the  Catholic  Church. 

He  had  not  waited  for  an  answer  to  his  mes- 
sage. There  would  not  have  been  time.  He 
knew  that  the  Governor  was  in  Albany,  held 
there  by  a  struggle  in  the  closing  days  of  a  spe- 
cial session  of  the  Legislature.  So  he  had  taken 
the  early  morning  train  from  Milton,  trusting 
to  the  urgency  of  his  business  to  get  him  the  few 
moments  of  the  Governor's  time  that  he  would 
need. 


86          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

Looking  up  at  the  great  square  block  of  the 
Capitol  building  as  he  toiled  sturdily  up  the 
steps,  he  was  reflecting  what  a  great,  blunder- 
ing, helpless  thing  was  this  which  men  called  the 
State.  Here,  this  building  was  the  outward 
symbol  and  the  sign  to  which  nine  millions  of 
people  looked  for  such  government  as  they  had. 
Yet  the  building  itself,  one  of  the  greatest  and 
costliest  ever  built  for  any  government  in  the 
world,  was  crumbling  after  only  a  few  years.  It 
had  been  honeycombed  in  its  building  by  rapacity 
and  inefficiency.  The  State  which  could  not 
build  even  its  own  house  with  honesty  and  de- 
cency, had  to  presume  to  look  after  the  interests 
of  millions  of  men,  any  one  of  whom  could  have 
looked  to  the  building  of  his  own  house  with  in- 
telligence and  thrift.  Democracy,  argued  the 
Dean,  thinks  that  its  government  is  the  aggre- 
gate of  the  intelligence  of  the  individuals  gov- 
erned. It  is  not  so;  it  does  not  rise  to  the  aver- 
age even  of  that  intelligence. 

The  Governor  was  a  Protestant,  come  of  the 
old  Protestant  stock  of  our  hill  country,  where 
there  still  lives  more  of  old-time  Protestant  bit- 
terness than,  perhaps,  in  any  other  place  in  this 
country.  But  he  was  a  direct  man  who  really 
wished  to  know  the  man-to-man  truth  of  the 
problems  that  confronted  him.  He  knew 
Father  Driscoll  of  Milton  by  repute,  knew  that 
from  him  he  would  get  straight  truth  in  short 
words,  and  he  was  unfeignedly  glad  to  see  him. 


THE  DEAN'S  JOURNEY  87 

"It's  that  strike  of  yours  up  there,  I  suppose, 
Father,"  he  said  as  he  seated  the  old  priest.  "I 
wish  you'd  give  me  an  outline  of  the  whole  busi- 
ness, at  first  hand.  I've  tried  to  watch  it  and 
I've  had  reports,  of  course,  but  you  are  on  the 
ground." 

"You  know  John  Sargent,  the  owner  of  the 
Milton  Machinery  Company?"  the  Dean  began, 
at  the  root  of  things.  The  Governor  nodded 
shortly,  and  Father  Driscoll  went  on: 

"He  owns  not  only  the  company  but  he  owns 
Milton,  man  and  boy,  hand  and  foot.  It  is  a 
situation  that  is  not  supposed  to  exist  since 
feudal  times.  But  that  is  not  the  point.  It  ex- 
ists." 

"Always  so  in  a  one-mill  town,"  admitted  the 
Governor,  who  knew  his  State. 

"He  let  the  strike  go  on  peaceably,"  the  Dean 
resumed,  "for  a  matter  of  three  months.  It 
seemed  that  it  had  settled  down  to  a  mere  ques- 
tion of  endurance — his  money  and  his  capacity 
for  losing  money  on  the  one  side,  and  the  ca- 
pacity of  the  people  for  starvation  on  the  other. 
Then  he  became  desperate.  I  believe  that  com- 
petition was  cutting  the  ground  from  under  him 
in  the  markets,  while  his  wheels  stood  idle.  He 
came  to  Milton  and  took  personal  charge  of  his 
end  of  the  strike.  He  found  that  the  head  and 
the  soul  of  the  strike  was  Jim  Loyd." 

"That's  the  Socialist,  isn't  it?"  the  Governor 
caught  at  the  name. 


88          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"Well,"  the  Dean  considered,  as  if  he  had 
never  before  thought  of  the  matter,  "he  works 
twenty  hours  a  day  in  the  cause  of  his  fellow- 
workers  who  are  idle,  and  through  all  those  hours 
he  curses  bitterly  the  fact  that  he  is  held  down 
to  an  equality  with  them.  If  you  can  make  a 
Socialist  out  of  that — 

"I  only  know,"  said  the  Governor,  "that  the 
Socialists  cut  down  the  Republican  vote  of  Mil- 
ton a  thousand  or  so  last  Fall.  When  I  asked 
the  reason,  the  Committeeman  said,  'Jim 
Loyd.' " 

"It  is  likely,"  the  Dean  agreed.  "The  vote- 
cutting  side  of  it  would  not  occur  to  me." 

"Now  that  is  what  I  do  not  understand."  The 
Governor  was  willing  to  digress,  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  it  was  a  very  busy  day  and  the  other 
fact  that  a  hundred  senators  and  assemblymen 
were  just  at  this  moment  holding  up  some  of  his 
pet  measures.  "Your  Church  opposes  Socialism 
root  and  branch,  is  bound  to,  I  believe;  Social- 
ism plans  the  end  of  you  along  with  everything 
else,  so  far  as  one  can  gather;  you  preach  against 
it  officially  and  privately,  I  suppose;  yet  you 
never  seem  willing  to  come  out  and  give  any 
practical  political  help  against  it." 

"Leo  Thirteenth,"  said  the  old  priest  quietly, 
"did  more  to  hold  back  the  real  dangers  of  So- 
cialism than  did  all  the  political  organizations 
of  the  nineteenth  century." 


THE  DEAN'S  JOURNEY  89 

"That  may  be,  Father;  I  do  not  know  the 
world  question  broadly  enough  to  dispute  it.  I 
speak  of  matters  as  I  see  them  right  here  at  home. 
Your  Church  is,  potentially,  the  greatest  politi- 
cal force  in  the  State.  Socialism  directs  itself 
pretty  squarely  against  you — for  reasons  which 
you  must  appreciate  more  fully  than  I  do.  Yet, 
practically,  you  do  nothing." 

"You  mean,"  said  the  Dean  slowly,  "that  we 
should  use  our  influence  to  organize  voters 
against  Socialism?" 

"Well,  it's  about  the  only  effective  way." 

"From  that,"  said  the  Dean,  gazing  at  the 
ceiling,  "it  would  be  only  one  step  to  organizing 
them  to  vote  for  either  the  Democratic  or  Re- 
publican candidates." 

The  Governor  held  up  his  hands,  laughing. 
"Don't  do  it,"  he  appealed,  "I'd  be  the  last  Re- 
publican governor  of  New  York!" 

"It  might  not  work  that  way — I've  a  young 
assistant  at  home,  Father  Huetter,  a  Republi- 
can after  your  own  heart,  and  I  suspect  he'd 
have  more  power  than  I.  But,  seriously,  Gov- 
ernor, we  are  talking  about  the  impossible.  The 
business  of  the  Catholic  Church  is  with  the  souls 
of  men.  She  has  to  do  with  them,  not  as  Re- 
publicans or  Democrats  or  as  Socialists  even, 
but  as  souls.  Now  her  business  with  them  con- 
cerns the  Ten  Commandments  of  God.  Are 
they  obsolete?  Has  our  civilization  become  so 


90          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

complex  that  there  must  be  written  ten  new 
commandments  to  govern  trusts  and  the  division 
of  labor  and  its  products? 

"You,  in  common  with  every  other  man  who 
thinks  beneath  all  this  yeasty  talk  of  to-day, 
know  that  there  are  social  troubles  and  labor 
troubles  for  just  one  reason.  That  reason  is 
that  some  man  or  set  of  men  in  a  position  to  do 
so  with  impunity  is  breaking  one  of  the  laws  of 
God  against  his  fellow-men. 

"You  speak  of  'solutions';  the  Socialists  want 
'solutions';  every  man  who  mounts  a  barrel  to 
talk  has  a  'solution.'  We  know  that  there  is  one 
solution  and  only  one.  That  is  the  law  of  moral 
justice  between  man  and  man  or  between  one 
man  and  a  thousand  other  men  who  may  be  in 
some  way  dependent  upon  him." 

"That  must  be  the  business  of  the  Church, 
then;  the  State  cannot  handle  abstractions." 
The  Governor  was  positive. 

"Governor,  there  are  no  abstractions.  The 
law  of  moral  justice  is  written  all  across  your 
statute  books.  Why  is  it  not  in  force?  The 
business  of  the  Church  is  to  educate  the  con- 
science and  mold  the  heart  of  the  people  so  that 
they  see  justice  and  wish  it.  When  the  people 
— who  are  the  State — see  justice  and  wish  it, 
and  yet  it  is  not  done,  where  is  the  fault? 
In  the  machinery  of  government,  which  does  not 
respond  to  the  will  of  the  driver.  Then  the  ma- 
chinery must  be  changed.  Now,  there  is  more 


THE  DEAN'S  JOURNEY          91 

Socialism  than  has  been  heard  in  this  chamber  for 
a  long  time,  I  believe." 

"It  does  not  respond,"  said  the  Governor,  smil- 
ing. "I  can  attest  that.  I  was  elected  to  make 
a  certain  law.  The  senators  and  assemblymen 
out  there  were  sent  here  to  pass  the  same  law. 
They  are  out  there  now  squabbling  each  for  him- 
self, and  I  cannot  get  the  law." 

"I  listened  a  while  as  I  was  coming  in,"  said 
the  Dean.  "It  sounded  like  the  Athenians  in 
the  market-place:  one  saying  one  thing,  another 
another  thing.  In  the  meanwhile  my  people  are 
heart-sick  and  desperate  and  starving.  God 
knows  what  is  happening  in  Milton  this  minute." 

"Forgive  me,"  said  the  Governor.  "I  know 
you  did  not  come  all  the  way  down  here  to  hear 
my  troubles.  Just  what  is  the  situation?" 

"Sargent  tried  to  bribe  Loyd,"  the  Dean  re- 
sumed promptly,  "and  at  the  same  time  tried  to 
discredit  him  by  spreading  the  report  that  he  was 
ready  to  betray  his  fellows.  Why  Loyd  did  not 
kill  him  I  do  not  know,  for  he  is  a  man  of  violent 
and  terrible  temper. 

"It  came  near  to  throwing  the  town  into  riot 
and  utter  lawlessness.  Then  before  Loyd  had 
gotten  fully  in  command  again,  Sargent  hired 
anarchists  and  agitators  of  every  type  to  come 
into  Milton  on  Labor  Day  to  stir  up  bitterness. 
He  even  appeared  in  the  street  himself  and 
kicked  a  dwarf,  to  provoke  an  attack  upon  him- 
self." 


92          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"You  saved  his  life  that  day,  I've  heard." 

"Loyd  would  not  have  let  him  be  hurt,  any- 
way. That  was  the  evening  he  wired  you  for 
troops,  and  I  followed  his  message  to  you  with 
one  saying  that  there  was  no  need.  There  was 
no  need.  But,  yesterday  Sargent  had  two  hun- 
dred deputy  sheriffs  sworn  in,  roustabouts  and 
hangers-on  generally  they  are,  I  believe,  and 
brought  to  Milton.  Ostensibly  they  are  there  to 
protect  his  property,  but  their  real  business  is  to 
provoke  the  men  to  such  a  bloody  conflict  as  will 
break  the  strike  by  frightening  the  more  timid 
of  them. 

"Last  night  young  Harry  Loyd,  Jim  Loyd's 
young  brother,  was  killed  by  these  deputies  as  he 
was  passing  the  mill  gate." 

"How?"  said  the  Governor.  "Was  there  no 
rioting,  no  attack  on  the  mill?" 

"The  boy  was  alone,"  the  Dean  responded 
quietly,  "walking  whistling  down  the  road  from 
his  girl.  You  heard  otherwise  this  morning?" 

"My  report  was  confused,"  said  the  Governor, 
guardedly.  "Go  on,  please,  Father." 

"There  is  no  more.  John  Sargent  stood  at 
my  side  on  the  street  last  night  and  listened  to 
thousands  of  men  clamoring  for  his  life.  In  the 
dark,  he  went  away  like  a  shadow.  Whether  he 
got  back  to  the  safety  of  the  mill  or  left  Milton 
on  foot  I  do  not  know.  No  man  in  Milton 
would  have  dared  give  him  conveyance,  and  he 
could  not  have  boarded  a  train." 


THE  DEAN'S  JOURNEY  93 

"Then  you  think  Sargent  is  deliberately  try- 
ing to  bring  on  bloodshed.  Doesn't  he  value  his 
own  life?" 

"The  workings  of  physical  courage  and  physi- 
cal cowardice  are  very  peculiar,  Governor.  But 
that  does  not  interest  me.  His  life  is  no  more 
important,  except  to  himself,  than  was  the  life 
of  the  boy  who  died  last  night.  Now  I  believe 
that  John  Sargent  is  morally  responsible  for  the 
death  of  that  boy.  But  legally,  in  the  eyes  of 
men,  who  killed  Harry  Loyd?" 

"Why,  Father,  that  would  be  hard  to—" 

"You  did/' 

The  old  priest  had  spoken  calmly,  with  the 
quiet  emphasis  of  simple  conviction.  It  struck 
the  Governor  harder  than  if  he  had  been  angrily 
denounced.  He  shrank  back  in  his  chair,  throw- 
ing his  arm  before  his  face.  For  the  space  of  a 
full  minute  the  two  men  sat  without  a  word,  un- 
til the  distant  clanging  of  an  elevator  door 
seemed  to  rouse  the  Governor. 

"Surely,  Father,"  he  said,  gathering  himself 
together,  "you  go  too  far.  My  position  does  not 
—you  cannot  throw  responsibility  upon  a  man 
like  that.  I  did  not  even  know  that  those  depu- 
ties had  been  sworn." 

"You  know  it  now,"  said  Father  Driscoll  re- 
lentlessly. "If  another  man  be  killed  to-night, 
who,  then,  shall  be  responsible?" 

"It  comes  back  to  the  old  thing,"  the  Gov- 
ernor returned,  smarting.  "The  machinery  of 


94          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

State.  I  cannot  reach  my  hand  from  here  to 
Milton  to  stop  things." 

"Governor,  is  it  well  to  hang  on  that  word 
'machinery,'  when  murder,  actual  murder,  is 
what  we  have  to  think  of?  Those  two  hundred 
deputies  are  the  officers  of  the  county.  They  are 
deputies  of  the  sheriff.  The  sheriff  is  your 
deputy.  They  and  he  are  virtually  at  your  or- 
ders. Can  you  say  that  you  are  not  responsible 
for  their  acts  ? 

"But  neither  did  I  come  here  to  charge  you 
with  this.  It  is  bad  enough  in  all  conscience, 
without  stopping  to  cavil  as  to  where  the  blame 
lies.  There  is  now  just  one  important  question. 
That  is:  Are  you  going  to  prevent  bloodshed 
and  suffering?  Nothing  else  really  matters  just 
now." 

"I  do  not  see  just  what  I  can  do.  The  State 
constitution  hampers  the  executive  in  so  many 
ways." 

"But  the  State  constitution  does  not  hamper 
John  Sargent.  The  'machinery'  of  which  we 
talk  seems  to  respond  beautifully  to  his  will. 
He  has  but  to  use  a  little  money,  and  he  finds 
himself  in  direct  command  of  an  arm  of  the  law. 
Finds  that  arm  ready  to  do  murder  at  his  bid- 
ding. 

"Can  it  be,  Governor,  that  you  do  not  real- 
ize the  horror  and  the  crime  of  it?  Those  depu- 
ties wear  the  badge  of  government.  They,  to 
my  men,  represent  government,  all  that  my 


THE  DEAN'S  JOURNEY          95 

men  see  of  government.  The  government,  then, 
comes  to  kill  them,  peaceful,  God-fearing  men, 
every  one  as  valuable  to  the  State  as  you  or  I, 
and  comes  to  kill  them  at  the  word  of  John  Sar- 
gent, their  enemy. 

"A  little  while  ago  you  wondered  why  the 
Catholic  Church  gave  no  practical  help  in  hold- 
ing back  Socialism.  In  common  reason,  sir,  tell 
me,  how  long  do  you  think  any  government 
should  last  which  can  be  so  turned  back  against 
the  lives  of  those  who  support  it  and  make  it  pos- 
sible? If  it  were  not  for  the  great  balancing  in- 
ertia of  the  millions  of  people  such  government 
could  not  continue  over  night.  You  know  that." 

"Yes.  But  the  system  of  government  exists. 
The  executive  must  be  the  last  to  think  of  over- 
turning it." 

"I  am  not  thinking,  Governor,  of  the  State 
nor  of  its  system.  I  am  thinking  of  three  thou- 
sand men  in  Milton.  They  are  my  friends  and 
my  children.  I  baptize  them,  I  marry  them,  I 
bury  their  dead.  Protestant  and  Catholic  alike 
give  me  respect,  and,  I  hope,  some  love.  I 
preach  to  them  law  and  sufferance  and  patience. 
But  how  long  may  I  continue  to  preach  law  to 
them,  when  the  law  turns  rifles  of  murder  against 
their  breasts?  How  long  shall  I  tell  them  to  go 
on  starving  quietly  and  letting  their  children  and 
their  women  starve,  how  long  shall  I  preach  pa- 
tience to  them,  when  the  fruits  of  patience  are 
death?  Socialism!  Socialism  is  not  dangerous! 


96          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

But  murder  is  dangerous!  And  hunger  is  dan- 
gerous !" 

The  Governor  was  amazed.  The  quiet- 
spoken,  priestly  old  gentleman  had  suddenly 
blazed  forth  into  a  fire  of  very  human  feeling. 

"I  do  not  know,  Father,"  he  said  hesitatingly, 
"the  power  of  the  State  is  not  to  be  put  to  use 
except  as  a  last  resort.  The  people  do  not  like 
it." 

"Governor,  are  you  the  man  to  stand  with 
your  hand  at  the  helm  of  State,  watching  the 
winds  of  political  chances?  I  do  not  believe  you 
are  that  man.  I  cannot  blame  you  for  think- 
ing of  your  own  future,  no.  But  when  you  were 
made  Governor  of  this  State  the  conduct  of  its 
government  fell  upon  you  alone,  so  far  as  your 
power  goes.  The  first  article  of  your  oath  as 
governor  is  to  protect  human  life.  That  thing 
is  concrete.  There  are  no  systems  or  confusing 
theories  about  it.  I  have  shown  you  that  hu- 
man life  is  in  danger,  and  that  through  the  au- 
thority and  complicity  of  the  State  itself, 
through  you,  in  fine.  Are  you  going  to  protect 
that  life?" 

"What  do  you  think  could  be  done?"  The 
Governor  did  not  say  that  he  would  accept  the 
Dean's  suggestion.  Probably  he  was  merely 
groping  for  a  way  out  of  the  immediate  position 
in  which  he  found  himself. 

"Those  two  hundred  deputies  must  be  re- 
moved. You  cannot,  perhaps,  force  John  Sar- 


THE  DEAN'S  JOURNEY  97 

gent  to  send  them  away  from  Milton,  but  you 
must  at  least  take  from  them  the  sanction  and 
the  authority  of  the  State.  So  long  as  they  wear 
your  badge,  you  are  responsible  for  them.  It 
is  unthinkable  that  our  men  should  be  at  the 
mercy  of  these  who  hide  behind  the  great  power 
of  the  State.  You  must  make  Sheriff  Beals 
discharge  them." 

"I  can  do  that,  maybe ;  but  will  that  help  mat- 
ters practically?  They  will  remain  in  Milton  in 
the  pay  of  Sargent  and  the  result  will  be  the 
same." 

"Then  you  are  bound  by  your  oath  to  send 
troops  there  and  prevent  murder.  It  will  be 
that." 

"That  is  difficult,  since  I  have  given  out  your 
message  of  only  a  week  ago,  in  which  you  said 
there  was  no  need  of  soldiers.  There  were  peo- 
ple, strong  influences,  urging  me  to  send  troops 
then.  I  refused  to  send  them,  on  your  represen- 
tations. I  do  not  see  how  I  could  explain  my 
change  of  sentiment." 

"I  have  explained  mine,"  said  the  Dean 
quickly.  "John  Sargent  has  begun  to  kill  men 
with  deliberation." 

"That  is  difficult  to  prove,  Father.  The  affair 
of  last  night  might  have  happened  in  so  many 
ways." 

"Governor,  do  you  believe  that  I  have  given 
you  a  truthful  and  accurate  account  of  the  situa- 
tion?" 


98          THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"I  do.     Certainly,  Father." 

"And  do  you  believe  that  John  Sargent,  no 
longer  ago  than  last  night  practically  admitted 
to  me  that  he  was  going  to  do  these  very  things?" 

"I  have  your  word,  of  course,  Father.  He 
must  have  been  mad." 

"He  was  telling  me  only  what  I  already  knew 
instinctively.  And  that  was  after  he  had  lec- 
tured me  on  the  dangers  of  Socialism." 

"I  see,"  said  the  Governor.  Though  just 
what  it  was  that  he  saw  was  not  entirely  clear. 

"You  understand  and  believe  what  I  have  told 
you,  then.  The  lives  of  men  are  in  danger. 
You  can  save  them.  You  will  do  it?" 

"I  must  do  it.  I  will  do  it.  But  I — it  will 
cost  me  a  great  deal." 

The  two  men  fell  into  a  short  silence,  while  the 
Governor  was  counting  the  chances.  Finally 
Father  Driscoll  said  quietly : 

"Governor,  you  know  that  I  have  never  taken 
any  active  part  in  politics  of  any  kind.  But  I 
have  lived  a  long  time,  and  I  have  seen  the  com- 
ing and  the  going  of  many  men  in  public  life. 
I  have  watched  their  careers.  No  man  of  them 
ever  hurt  his  career  by  following  plain  duty. 
Compromise  and  weakness  at  critical  moments 
are  the  things  that  sooner  or  later  remove  most 
men  from  a  path  to  greatness.  I  am  old  and  I 
have  seen.  Believe  me." 

"I  know  you  are  right,  of  course,  Father, 
but—" 


THE  DEAN'S  JOURNEY          99 

"No.  Do  not  take  it  that  I  spoke  from  prin- 
ciple or  religion.  I  spoke  simply  of  sound  poli- 
tics. Any  close  student  of  our  public  life  could 
tell  you  the  same. 

"But  I  am  not  a  Fenelon.  At  times  I  am 
only  a  prosy  old  man,  and  every  man  must  cut 
for  himself  the  solid  steps  up  the  rock  of  his  life. 

"I  am  talking  here,  and  I  have  not  yet  come 
to  the  real  business  of  my  day." 

"Why,  I  thought  we  had  settled—"  The 
Governor  began,  a  little  nervously. 

"I  spoke  to  you  of  three  thousand  men  in  Mil- 
ton. There  are  more  than  that  number  of 
women  and  children  who  have  to  be  spoken  of." 

"What  of  them?" 

"They  are  starving."  The  Dean  put  it  sim- 
ply, baldly. 

"That  is  harder  yet,"  said  the  Governor. 
"But  nothing  can  be  done.  The  men  will  not 
give  in  and  go  back  to  work." 

"No.  They  will  not  give  in.  And  the 
women  and  the  children  would  rather  starve  than 
see  them  do  so.  Were  you  ever  hungry,  Gov- 
ernor?" 

The  Governor  looked  up  quickly.  Then,  un- 
derstanding, he  shook  his  head  slowly. 

"No,"  he  said  slowly,  "I  never  was.  I  don't 
know  what  it  means." 

"No  more  does  any  man  who  has  not  felt  it. 
Nor  does  any  man  except  the  father  himself 
know  what  it  is  to  have  a  child  weak  with  hunger 


100        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

look  up  into  his  face  and  wonder  why  there  is  no 
food. 

"Governor,  this  strike  must  be  stopped.  You 
must  stop  it." 

"I?" 

"There  is  no  other  man  who  can  do  it,  except 
John  Sargent,  who  will  not  do  it." 

"But  I — I  am  not  a  Czar.  I  have  no  power 
over  John  Sargent.  Nor  have  I  any  over  the 
men.  They  would  not  go  back  to  work,  if  I  tried 
to  drive  them  with  soldiers.  You  know  my  lim- 
itations. You  know  the  Governor  can  do  noth- 
ing outside  of  an  acute  crisis;  very  little  then." 

"The  crisis  in  Milton  is  the  most  acute  that 
could  possibly  be  imagined.  There  is  bloodshed 
on  the  one  hand  and  starvation  on  the  other.  By 
a  simple  act  you  can  send  the  men  back  to  work 
and  put  bread  in  the  mouths  of  women  and  chil- 
dren. Will  you  do  it?" 

"I  do  not  understand  you  at  all,  Father. 
There  is  nothing  that  I  can  do,"  said  the  Gov- 
ernor decisively. 

"There  is.  And  I  think  you  will  do  it,"  the 
priest  affirmed  evenly.  The  Governor  sat  back 
and  waited.  He  could  not  imagine  what  might 
be  coming  next.  The  Dean  stretched  his  arm 
out  across  the  corner  of  the  desk  and  spoke 
slowly. 

"The  men  would  be  eager  to  troop  back  to 
work  at  your  word.  You  have  only  to  send  a 
few  soldiers  up  there,  two  companies  with  one 


THE  DEAN'S  JOURNEY        101 

good  man  in  charge  would  be  plenty ;  take  charge 
of  the  mill  and  put  in  an  office  force.  The  river 
will  run  the  mill.  It  does  not  need  John  Sar- 
gent's hand." 

The  Governor  was  dumfounded.  The  thing 
was  unheard  of.  He  struggled  for  speech,  un- 
til a  certain  thought  struck  him.  Then  he  ex- 
ploded: 

"Why!  That's  Socialism — confiscation!  John 
Sargent  would  have  me  impeached!" 

Father  Driscoll  leaned  over  the  desk  and  said, 
a  little  grimly: 

"Governor,  I  think  you  would  rather  not  have 
said  just  those  words:  John  Sargent  would 
have  you  impeached.  Remember  that  the  other 
side  of  the  picture  is  this :  Men  as  good  as  you, 
and  better  than  John  Sargent,  will  be  killed,  and 
women  and  children  will  starve." 

"I  do  not  mean  John  Sargent  exactly,"  said 
the  Governor,  flushing  a  little.  "I  mean  his  as- 
sociates, the  whole  financial  power  of  this  State 
and  of  the  Nation,  the  party  which  gave  me 
office  and  to  which  I  owe  loyalty,  all  would  con- 
demn me." 

"Sir,"  said  the  old  priest  sturdily,  "you  owe 
loyalty  to  the  people  of  this  State.  They  gave 
you  office." 

"But,  it  is  Socialism.     I  do  not  believe  in  it." 

"Governor,  it  is  no  more  Socialism  than  it  is 
Polygamy.  It  is  common  sense  in  a  crisis.  If 
there  were  a  flood  or  a  great  fire,  which  might 


102        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

not  cause  half  the  suffering  of  this  strike,  you 
would  commandeer  the  whole  resources  of  the 
State  to  restore  normal  conditions.  You  can  do 
it  here  just  as  constitutionally,  and  with  every 
right. 

"You  speak  of  impeachment.  Would  the  As- 
sembly dare  to  vote  your  impeachment  in  such  a 
cause?  They  would  not,  and  you  are  too  good 
a  politician  not  to  know  it.  You  know  that  the 
very  attempt  by  the  forces  of  which  you  speak 
to  ruin  you — and  they  might  attempt  it — would 
do  the  one  thing  for  you  that  would  make  your 
life  great.  It  would  take  your  future  out  of 
the  hands  of  organization  and  of  party  system 
and  place  it  on  the  one  foundation  where  the 
career  and  future  of  a  great  man  is  safe,  in  the 
heart,  the  great  sound  heart  of  the  people." 

The  Governor  was  thinking  rapidly,  but  he 
was  not  ready  to  speak.  As  a  man,  the  words 
of  the  priest  stirred  him,  brought  him  back  to 
days  when,  first  entering  public  life,  he  had 
vowed  that  nothing,  no  combination  of  forces  or 
organization,  should  ever  swerve  him  from  the 
absolute  right.  He  knew  that  there  was  a  pow- 
erful truth  in  what  the  priest  had  said.  He 
knew  only  too  well  that  man's  public  life  was 
really  secure  only  in  the  understanding  and  trust 
of  the  people.  But  he  knew  that  the  step  which 
the  priest  was  urging  was  not  one  that  would  cut 
him  off  forever  from  the  confidence  of  the  men 
who  had  made  the  steps  for  him  up  to  where  he 


THE  DEAN'S  JOURNEY         103 

stood.  He  knew  that  it  was  the  right  thing, 
that,  probably,  in  the  long  run,  it  would  be  the 
great  and  the  wise  thing  to  do.  But  loyalty  to 
the  immediate  party  and  to  individuals  is  always 
a  fetich  to  men  in  our  public  life,  and  he  felt  that 
it  was  too  strong  for  him. 

"I  believe  that  you  are  right,  Father,"  he  said 
slowly.  "But  you  do  not  know  all  that  it  means. 
You  do  not  know  the  many  lines  that  go  into 
this  net  that  we  call  the  government  of  the 
State." 

"In  a  crisis,"  said  the  priest  sententiously, 
"where  there  is  suffering  and  the  lives  of  men 
are  in  danger,  there  is  but  one  way  to  clear  away 
lines  and  knots.  Cut  them." 

"What  you  suggest,  the  solution  that  you  see 
so  clearly,  may  be  used  some  day,  perhaps  be- 
fore long.  But  I  do  not  think  the  people  are 
ready  for  it  yet.  Certainly,  the  party  on  whose 
platform  I  was  elected  did  not  anticipate  any 
such  thing  from  me.  And,  after  all,  our  gov- 
ernment is  a  government  based  upon  party 
principles.  I  am  a  Republican,  not  a  Socialist." 

"Yes,"  returned  the  Dean,  "it  will  come  when, 
as  with  all  compromises  and  half  measures,  it  will 
be  too  late.  You  are  afraid  of  the  name  Social- 
ism. Are  you  more  afraid  of  the  name  than  of 
the  thing? 

"You  call  upon  men,"  he  went  on,  "to  come  to 
the  aid  of  order  and  law,  against  Socialism. 
You  are  afraid  of  chaos.  But  do  you  realize 


104        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

that  Socialism  gets  ahead  in  this  country  for  just 
one  single  reason?  That  reason  is,  what  you 
have  just  been  telling  me:  The  hand  of  govern- 
ment cannot  do  right  because  it  is  tied  by  many 
knots.  The  man  who,  in  your  position  or  in  the 
one  position  in  this  country  that  is  greater  than 
yours,  will  cut  some  of  those  knots,  who  will  show 
the  people  that  government  is  a  thing  of  heart 
and  hands  and  brains  and  not  a  thing  of  paper 
and  tape,  that  man  will  be  able  to  laugh  Social- 
ism out  of  the  country." 

"I  am  tempted,"  said  the  Governor,  revealing 
a  part  of  the  vision  that  was  flashing  through 
his  brain.  "I  believe  that  a  man  might  build 
up  the  greatest  career  of  the  century  on  just 
what  you  say,  Father — " 

"I  did  not  mean  it  that  way,  sir.  Though 
you  are  right,"  the  priest  admitted,  "and 
logical. 

"I  have  but  one  thought  in  my  mind.  It  is  the 
thought  of  the  minute.  My  people  are  in  danger 
and  they  are  starving.  You  can  save  them.  It 
is  the  step  that  is  at  your  foot.  Will  you  take 
it?" 

A  secretary  here  ventured  to  interrupt.  It 
was  evident  that  the  secretary  had  a  very  high 
idea  of  the  importance  of  the  business  which 
waited  outside,  for  he  handed  a  card  to  the  Gov- 
ernor and  stood  waiting,  as  if  sure  of  an  immedi- 
ate response. 

It  was  John  Sargent's  card,  and  the  Governor, 


THE  DEAN'S  JOURNEY         105 

a  little  annoyed  that  Sargent  should  seem  to  have 
such  unceremonious  entry  to  him,  handed  the 
card  to  Father  Driscoll. 

"Shall  I  have  him  come  in?" 

"My  business  is  finished,  Governor.  I  can 
say  no  more.  It  rests  with  your  sense  of  duty," 
said  the  Dean,  rising. 

"No."  The  Governor  detained  him.  "I  wish 
you  would  stay,  Father." 

The  Governor  took  a  hasty  command  of  the 
situation,  as  John  Sargent  strode  brusquely  into 
the  room. 

"Mr.  Sargent,"  he  said,  "I  presume  that  you 
are  here  on  business  about  the  strike  in  Milton. 
Father  Driscoll  is  here  upon  the  same  business. 
It  is  very  opportune  that  I  should  be  able  to  hear 
at  one  sitting  the  two  men  most  competent  to 
discuss  that  situation." 

Sargent  stared  shortly  into  the  quiet  face  of 
the  old  priest  and  finally  nodded  to  him.  Then 
he  turned  sharply  to  the  Governor. 

"I  have  nothing  to  discuss  here.  I  asked  you 
for  troops.  You  refused  them,  on  the  word  of 
this  man  here.  You  were  wrong.  My  mill  was 
blown  up  by  dynamite  this  morning.  Loyd  has 
been  arrested.  I  do  not  know  how  many  were 
in  this.  But  I  want  troops  there  at  once.  I 
want  force  enough  to  arrest  every  striker  in  the 
town  if  necessary.  You  could  have  prevented 
this,  Governor.  Your  weakness  is  responsible 
for  it." 


106        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"A  few  moments  ago,"  said  the  Governor 
curtly,  "I  was  told  that  I  was  responsible  for 
the  killing  of  a  man  in  Milton  last  night.  Is 
that  right?  Was  I  responsible  for  young  Harry 
Loyd's  death?" 

"There  was  rioting.     It  was  his  own  fault." 

Father  Driscoll  swung  around  indignantly  in 
his  chair,  but,  before  he  could  speak,  the 
Governor  broke  in: 

"I  do  not  believe  that,  Mr.  Sargent;  do  you?" 
Sargent  flushed  darkly  but  the  Governor  did  not 
wait  for  his  answer.  He  turned  to  Father  Dris- 
coll, saying: 

"Have  you  any  suggestion,  Father?" 

"Only  this,"  said  the  Dean,  as  though  thinking 
slowly  to  himself:  "I  left  Milton  early  this 
morning,  but  in  broad  daylight.  The  town  was 
then  quiet.  There  was  no  disorder  of  any  kind. 
The  mill  gates  were  guarded  and  well  patrolled. 
How  could  any  man  or  men  have  entered  there, 
in  full  daylight,  and  set  dynamite  ?  I  should  like 
to  see  the  message  which  Mr.  Sargent  received 
apprising  him  of  the  affair.  It  would  be  inter- 
esting. Perhaps  he  has  it  with  him." 

The  Governor  turned  quickly  to  Sargent. 

"Have  you  it?" 

"I  have  it,"  said  Sargent,  "and  it  came  in  pri- 
vate cipher.  Even  the  telegraph  company  can't 
help  you.  No  one  sees  my  private  business.  I 
see  what  this  priest  means  to  infer." 

"I  do  not,  yet,"  said  the  Governor.     "But  be- 


THE  DEAN'S  JOURNEY        107 

fore  we  speak  of  troops  or  anything  else,  will  you 
read  me  that  message?" 

"I  will  not.     This  is  not  an  inquisition." 

"Mr.  Sargent,"  said  the  Governor,  rising,  "I 
am  rapidly  coming  to  a  certain  decision.  I  did 
not  think  ten  minutes  ago  that  I  should  ever 
come  to  that  decision.  It  is  one  that  means  the 
risk  of  my  whole  career.  It  probably  involves  a 
great  deal  to  you.  It  may  change  the  whole 
economic  future  of  this  State.  In  another  min- 
ute I  shall  have  arrived  at  that  decision.  Before 
I  do — once  more,  will  you  give  me  that  mes- 
sage" 

"No." 

The  Governor  paced  the  floor  carefully  three 
times.  He  gave  more  than  the  minute  he  had 
allowed.  He  turned  and  sat  down  at  his  desk 
with  a  certain  finality.  When  he  spoke  it  was  in 
the  voice  of  one  announcing  an  ordinary  inten- 
tion. 

"Mr.  Sargent,"  he  said,  "the  troops  will  go  to 
Milton.  The  town  and  all  in  it  will  be  placed 
under  martial  law.  The  soldiers  will  take 
charge  of  your  mill.  The  men  will  go  back  to 
work  the  day  after  to-morrow,  under  the  condi- 
tions prevailing  before  the  strike.  A  force  will 
start  at  once  to  take  charge  of  your  office.  I 
would  advise  you  not  to  interfere  with  them  in 
any  way.  When  you  are  ready  to  arbitrate  your 
differences  with  the  men  I  shall  appoint  a  board, 
and  raise  the  martial  law." 


108        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

John  Sargent  sat  glaring.  He  had  seen  many 
governors.  This  one  had  suddenly  gone  mad; 
that  was  all. 

Then  a  doubt  struck  him,  and  he  leaped  from 
his  chair.  He  walked  over  to  the  Governor, 
shaking  with  anger  and  menace. 

"You  fool  puppet,"  he  shouted,  "I  almost  be- 
lieve you  mean  it!" 

"I  mean  it  so  much  that  I  am  now  calling  my 
secretary  to  set  it  in  motion,"  said  the  Governor, 
as  he  calmly  touched  a  button. 

"And  how  long  do  you  think  you'll  be  Gov- 
ernor after  you  attempt  it?"  roared  Sargent, 
standing  over  him  threateningly. 

"I  considered  that  an  hour  ago." 

"Oh,  you  did,  did  you?  With  this  man  here? 
The  two  of  you  sworn  to  uphold  law  and  the  or- 
der of  things,  and  you  sat  here  plotting  to  ruin 
me  and  bring  the  curse  of  Socialism  on  the  coun- 
try." 

"On  the  contrary,"  said  the  Governor  lightly, 
"I  had  already  refused  to  do  this  thing  though 
Father  Driscoll  had  pleaded  for  it.  I  am  doing 
it  now.  Why?  Well,  say,  because  I  do  not 
like  you.  You  see  what  little  things  sometimes 
change  the  course  of  destinies  and  States." 

"A  little  thing  will  change  the  course  of  your 
lunacy,"  said  Sargent  grimly,  as  he  turned  to 
leave  the  room.  "There  is  a  man  here  in  Al- 
bany who  made  you  governor.  He  can  unmake 


THE  DEAN'S  JOURNEY        109 

you.  There  is  an  Assembly  out  there  now  that 
will  impeach  you." 

The  Governor  turned  to  Father  Driscoll  and 
said  with  a  smile : 

"There,  you  see,  Father,  how  the  strokes  of 
State  are  struck — and  foozled,"  he  added,  just  a 
little  ruefully. 

Father  Driscoll  rose,  preparing  to  go,  and  said 
evenly : 

"You  have  done  right,  the  thing  that  lay  to 
your  hand  to  do.  You  will  save  the  men,  and 
give  bread  to  the  women  and  children.  All  the 
powers  of  privilege  and  interest  and  rapacity  will 
hound  you.  You  have  measured  the  fight  and 
counted  the  cost.  And — and  I  do  not  think  you 
are  sorry.  Your  future  is  set  on  the  right,  and 
it  is  in  the  hand  of  God.  No.  I  do  not  think 
you  are  sorry." 

"No.  I  am  not  sorry,"  said  the  Governor,  as 
he  took  the  old  priest's  hand. 

Then  the  Dean  went  slowly  down  the  great 
ranks  of  steps  before  the  Capitol. 


CHAPTER  V 
THE  WILL  OF  GOD 

FEATHER  DRISCOLL  on  the  long  ride  up  the  val- 
*  ley  through  the  falling  September  after- 
noon and  dusk  sat  wrapped  in  thought.  Men 
who  knew  him  by  sight  and  others  who  knew 
only  the  Roman  collar  raised  their  hats  as  they 
passed,  entering  or  leaving  the  car.  The  habit 
of  a  lifetime  had  made  him  careful  never  to 
slight  the  respectful  courtesy  of  men.  He  had 
lived  through  a  time  when  in  this  his  country  a 
Catholic  priest  received  few  enough  of  such 
courtesies.  He  responded  ever  affably,  but,  it 
must  be  admitted,  a  little  mechanically  to-day, 
for  his  mind  refused  to  be  drawn  back  from  its 
business. 

Although  he  was  very  tired,  and  the  lines  of 
age  lay  heavy  down  his  face  and  across  his  shoul- 
der-blades, he  was  not  depressed.  He  was  com- 
ing home  from  the  capital  of  the  State  with  a 
victory  for  his  people.  If  he  could  not  see  the 
results  of  that  victory — as  who  can  see  the  ulti- 
mate consequences  of  any  decisive  step  in  this 
world? — he  was  at  least  sure  that  it  was  the  best 

and  the  right  thing  for  the  moment.    It  would 

no 


THE  WILL  OF  GOD  111 

tide  his  people  over  the  desperate  crisis.  No 
more  could  be  asked  in  a  struggle  such  as  theirs 
at  Milton. 

The  little  revealing  by-plays  of  human  na- 
ture, the  happinesses,  the  disappointments,  the 
excitement,  the  timidity,  the  boredom,  the  inci- 
dents that  draw  out  the  emotions,  ever  change- 
able and  varied,  of  our  people  as  they  travel, 
went  on  at  every  station  of  the  journey.  But 
the  Dean  of  Milton,  unlike  his  usual  self  that  was 
accustomed  to  look  on  all  things  with  an  open,  if 
whimsical,  eye  and  a  heart  of  human  understand- 
ing, was  noting  none  of  these  things  to-day. 

His  eyes  fixed  themselves  to  follow  the  ever- 
changing  line  of  the  hills  of  his  life  of  love  and 
work.  Here  a  cliff  stood  up,  almost  from  the 
edge  of  the  track,  its  hard  rock  face  bearing  still 
the  scratches  of  the  crystal  fingers  of  the  glaciers. 
Beyond  rolled  up  a  ridge,  born  of  the  rifting 
and  the  belching  of  a  far  older  time. 

Often  his  soul  had  stood  among  them  and  said 
in  its  awe:  "They  are  the  handmarks  of  God — 
my  hills!"  But  to-day  his  mind  looked  and 
said:  "What  are  they? — Little  wrinkles  and 
tiny  crowsfeet  on  the  face  of  the  earth."  Yet 
each  had  its  meaning.  Every  fold,  each  break 
in  the  line  of  the  hills,  told  its  own  story  of  some 
blistering  change  that  time  or  convulsion  had 
brought  about;  and  so,  together,  they  pieced  out 
to  you  the  history  of  a  world  in  the  making. 

What  wrought  it  all?    Where  was  the  im- 


112        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

pulse?  Pressure  from  underneath;  always  pres- 
sure from  below;  power  pent  up  and  repressed, 
fighting  its  way  to  the  surface,  to  freedom,  to 
expression.  Always  this. 

And  the  other  world?  The  world  of  men. 
Always  the  same.  Always  the  pressure  from 
beneath :  the  pressure  of  the  great,  dumb,  hungry 
many,  fighting  upward  from  beneath,  fighting 
for  room,  for  expression,  for  more  food. 

His  mind  skipped  from  the  hills  to  the  other 
side  of  the  earth.  He  saw  that  great  stream  of 
the  Aryan  peoples,  the  course  of  which  is  the  his- 
tory of  the  Western  World,  starting  from  its 
source  on  the  plains  of  western  Asia.  He  saw 
them,  a  hungry  folk,  when  mouths  were  many 
and  pastures  thin,  pushing  out  from  beneath  and 
spreading  to  newer  feeding  grounds. 

He  saw  the  Celt,  most  restless  and  impatient 
of  all  the  waves  of  men,  sweep  swiftly  across  the 
breadth  of  Europe,  until  he  came  to  rest,  for  a 
time,  on  the  rocks  of  Scotland  and  Ireland,  sit- 
ting there  with  eye  brooding  out  over  the  waters 
of  the  Western  ocean,  waiting  for  the  impulse 
that  should  leap  him  over  that  broad  barrier. 
Behind  the  Celt  came  the  waves  of  Frank  and 
Goth  and  the  broken,  many-crested  waves  of 
Teuton  and  of  Slav,  with  Lett  and  Russ  and 
grim  Tartar  waves  crowding  behind  all. 

Ever  the  same;  the  pressure  of  hunger  and  de- 
sire pushing  up  from  below! 

Now  Celt  and  Teuton  and  all,  with  mighty, 


THE  WILL  OF  GOD  113 

straining  leaps,  had  taken  the  barrier  of  the 
ocean  and  were  running  together  and  mingling, 
filling  the  valleys  and  lapping  the  high  places  of 
the  New  World.  In  a  single  century  they  had 
swept  all  across  this  continent. 

Again  the  feeding-grounds  are  narrow  and  the 
mouths  are  many.  Where  now?  And  still  ever 
that  pressure  from  underneath. 

But  there  is  a  difference.  Formerly,  else- 
where, the  many  were  dumb.  When  hunger 
drove  them  they  moved  mutely  out  from  under 
their  governing  classes,  went  to  new  places  and 
there  made  themselves  to  be  the  governing 
classes.  This  was  as  it  should  be  with  waves; 
the  bottom  of  one  wave  rolling  up  to  make  the 
top  of  the  next. 

Cassar  found  that  the  Germans  apportioned 
their  lands  to  individuals  freshly  each  year. 
One  hundred  and  fifty  years  after  Csesar,  Tacitus 
found  that  the  allotments  had  become  per- 
manent. Private  ownership  of  land  practically 
existed.  Here  was  the  end  of  Nomadism,  the 
beginning  of  Feudalism. 

Towns  grew  up  for  one  reason  and  another, 
but  most  often  because  men  having  skill  to  make 
things  with  tools  found  it  better  and  safer  to 
work  together  in  certain  localities.  But  since 
they  stayed  and  worked  in  one  place  they  could 
not  go  forth  to  gather  their  raw  material.  Other 
men  must  bring  it  to  them.  Nor  could  they  go 
out  to  sell  the  product  of  their  labors.  Still 


114        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

other  men  must  buy  it  from  them  to  peddle  it 
to  the  users  of  it.  These  others  who  bought  and 
sold  became  the  Bourgeoisie,  hated  alike  by 
dreamers  and  by  workers ;  fattening,  as  some  one 
said,  from  both  ends  of  the  workman's  candle. 

Government,  greedy  and  needy,  might  sell  op- 
pressive laws  to  the  Bourgeoisie,  but  the  work- 
man still  owned  his  tools  and  his  skill  of  eye  and 
hand.  These  he  might  use  or  not  use  as  he  saw 
fit.  Only  the  laws  of  supply  and  demand  were 
his  masters.  And  he  had  the  Church  and  his 
Guild  to  protect  him  from  open  injustice. 

Comes  now  the  age  of  machinery.  The  work- 
man's tools  are  taken  from  him.  His  power  of 
arm  and  sureness  of  eye  and  cleverness  for  de- 
sign are  all  supplanted.  A  roaring  river  or  a 
coal  mine  takes  the  place  of  his  strength  of 
muscle.  He  is  harnessed  to  a  machine  which  he 
can  only  start  and  stop.  The  machine  itself  sup- 
plies the  brains,  skill,  and  precision  which  once 
distinguished  the  good  workman  from  the  poor 
one. 

He  is  a  piece  of  the  machine,  essential  to  it,  as 
is  every  piece  of  steel  or  casting  in  it.  And  there 
are  pieces  in  it  which  cost  more  than  the  work- 
man's widow  could  get  for  his  life. 

Capital  owns  the  machine  with  which  the  man 
must  work — must  work  if  he  would  eat.  He 
may  work  only  as  Capital  permits  him  to  start 
the  machine. 

Up  again  comes  the  surge  from  the  bottom: 


THE  WILL  OF  GOD  115 

the  pressure  of  the  hungry,  unquiet  many,  strain- 
ing under  the  weight  of  machinery  and  capital 
and  fixed  economic  law. 

But  here  the  difference.  The  many  have 
voices  now.  They  do  not  now  strive  to  break  out 
from  under  the  governing  classes  above  them  and 
move  to  other  places.  There  is  nowhere  to  go. 
They  are  not  mute.  They  talk.  And  their  talk 
has  the  simplicity  of  brute  logic:  We  are  many, 
they  are  few.  Let  us  go  up  and  fight  them. 

The  many,  under  the  machinery,  know  that, 
geographically,  they  must  stay  where  they  are. 
The  classes  which  govern  them  and  govern  gov- 
ernment do  so  because  they  have  the  machinery 
and  capital.  Let  us,  then,  say  the  many,  take 
the  machinery,  which  we  alone  know  how  to  use. 
Let  us  take  the  capital — it  is  made  of  profits  from 
our  labor — and  make  it  work  for  all.  We  must 
move.  Yes.  But  we  move  upward.  We  will 
be  the  governing  class. 

The  Dean  moved  stiffly  in  his  seat.  The 
valley  lay  in  misty  darkness.  The  lamps  of  the 
train  were  lighted,  but,  as  he  looked,  the  last  of 
the  day  still  glinted  along  the  tops  and  ridges 
of  the  hills. 

History,  he  said  to  himself,  has  a  way  of  fixing 
a  day  when  something  came  to  a  head — some  men 
were  killed  on  a  certain  field,  a  paper  was  signed, 
a  man  was  crowned,  a  republic  was  proclaimed — 
and  announcing  to  us  that  the  thing  happened 
then  and  there.  It  did  not.  It  was  happening 


116        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

a  long  time  before  and  went  on  happening  a  long 
time  after,  in  the  heart  of  the  people.  That  is 
where  things  happen.  When  will  men — leaders, 
reformers,  teachers — know  that  there  is  all  good 
and  all  change? 

The  train  came  screeching  on  to  the  long 
bridge  that  crosses  into  Milton  and  the  old  priest 
gathered  his  great,  wide  frame  up  out  of  the  seat. 
"James  Driscoll,"  he  said  to  himself  with  a  queer 
little  droop  at  the  corners  of  his  mouth,  "you  are 
a  very  wise  man,  a  philosopher;  you  look  at 
things  with  a  great,  broad  view.  Yet  there  is 
Jimmie  Loyd  up  there  in  jail,  unjustly,  to-night 
and  you  care  more  for  his  little  finger  than  you 
do  for  Magna  Charta.  That  is  queer.  And 
you  know  of  human  hearts;  I've  heard  you  talk 
wisely  of  them.  He  is  sitting  there  in  his  cell, 
thinking  of  his  brother  that  had  to  die  last  night. 
Can  you  go  up  and  tell  him  what  his  heart  should 
feel?" 

Father  Huetter,  solicitous  and  full  of  events, 
met  him  at  the  steps  of  the  train. 

"You  must  be  dead,  Dean,"  he  grumbled,  as 
he  offered  a  young  shoulder  for  the  Dean's  old 
hand.  "You  should  never  have  made  that  jour- 
ney down  to  Albany  and  back  without  a  rest, 
especially  after  last  night." 

"I  know,  I  know,"  the  Dean  admitted  humbly 
enough.  "But  if  I  had  not  been  there  just  when 
I  was  I  should  have  accomplished  nothing." 


THE  WILL  OF  GOD  117 

"How  was  that?"  the  young  priest  queried 
eagerly. 

"When  I  had  exhausted  upon  the  Governor 
every  argument  that  I  knew,  John  Sargent,  of 
all  people,  came  in  and,  unwittingly,  browbeat 
the  Governor  into  a  resolution  to  which  I  had  not 
been  able  to  persuade  him.  But  what  happened 
here?"  Father  Driscoll  had  heard  in  Albany, 
from  the  owner  of  the  mill,  the  main  facts  of  the 
day's  occurrences  in  Milton ;  but  he  wanted  to  get 
the  first-hand  impressions  of  his  assistant.  By 
assuming  complete  ignorance  he  knew  that  he 
would  get  a  fuller  and  better  connected  account. 

"I  was  just  at  the  'last  prayers/"  Father 
Huetter  began,  as  they  turned  into  State  Street, 
"when  the  whole  town  was  shaken  by  an  explo- 
sion. It  seemed  to  come  from  the  direction  of 
the  mill,  and,  of  course,  I  suppose  every  one  in 
the  town  jumped  to  the  same  thought. 

"Soon  as  I  had  the  vestments  off  I  hurried  out 
and  down  the  street,  for  it  seemed  sure  that  some 
one  must  have  been  hurt.  The  town  was  in  the 
streets,  of  course,  and  some  women  and  children 
were  crying  from  fright,  or  perhaps  just  from 
overstrain  of  nerves." 

"Stale  tea  leaves  and  hunger,"  said  the  Dean 
grimly. 

"But  the  men,"  Father  Huetter  went  on,  "once 
they  had  heard  that  it  was  only  one  of  the  empty 
stock  houses  that  had  been  blown  up,  and  that  no 


118        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

one  had  been  killed,  seemed  to  take  no  interest 
whatever  in  the  thing.  It  seemed  ominous — as 
though  they  had  been  expecting  some  such  thing, 
and  were  half  disappointed  with  the  littleness  of 
the  result.  I  could  not  see  what  to  make  out  of 
it. 

"Then  I  remembered  all  the  excitement  that 
they  had  been  through  during  the  last  two  weeks 
or  so,  and  especially  last  night,  and  I  thought  I 
understood.  They  were  sated  with  sensations 
and  could  not  be  roused  any  more. 

"They  commented  to  each  other,  quite  freely 
and  with  no  rancor  whatever,  that  Sargent  had 
blown  up  a  cheap  part  of  his  own  mill,  in  order 
to  inflame  the  public  against  the  strikers.  There 
seemed  to  be  not  the  slightest  idea  in  any  one's 
mind  that  one  of  their  own  number  might  be 
directly  accused.  When  they  did  not  kill  John 
Sargent  last  night  with  their  hands,  as  they 
wished  to  do,  they  seemed  to  think  that  any  other 
revenge  on  him  would  be  silly." 

"What  more?"  questioned  the  Dean.  He  was 
very  tired  and  also  he  was  anxious  for  the  rest  of 
the  day's  work. 

"Before  the  dust  was  fairly  settled  from  the 
explosion,"  Father  Huetter  resumed  quickly, 
"young  Hilton,  Sargent's  secretary,  with  five  or 
six  of  the  deputies  whom  Sargent  has  here,  went 
before  Justice  Baxter  and  swore  out  a  warrant 
for  Jim  Loyd's  arrest.  It  seems  that  one  of  the 
agitators  who  came  here  at  the  beginning  of  the 


THE  WILL  OF  GOD  119 

strike  brought  in  a  quantity  of  dynamite  and 
some  sparking  apparatus  for  explosions.  He 
swore  that  Loyd  had  taken  these  from  him  and 
then  had  him  driven  from  the  town.  It  seems 
to  be  true.  Something  like  these  was  used  in 
the  explosion  this  morning." 

"And  Loyd  went  to  jail  quietly?" 

"I  never  saw  anything  like  it,"  broke  out 
Father  Huetter.  "I  was  there,  at  his  house, 
when  they  came  for  him.  I  had  thought  Jim 
Loyd  a  man  absolutely  without  any  fear  or  re- 
spect for  the  forms  of  law.  I  thought  he  was  a 
man  likely  to  die  fighting  on  his  own  doorstep 
rather  than  go  innocent  to  jail.  They  came 
heavily  armed.  He  rose  and  nodded  to  them. 
His  sister  was  beginning  to  cry  wildly.  He 
went  and  put  his  arm  gently  about  her  shoulder, 
telling  her  not  to  worry,  that  everything  would 
be  all  right.  Then  he  crossed  over  to  where  his 
brother's  body  lay  and  snatched  the  Crucifix 
from  off  the  breast.  My  heart  was  in  my  mouth. 
What  was  he  going  to  do?  You  know  it's  only 
a  little  while  since  I  thought  that  he  had  lost  all 
religion  and  hated  God  and  Church  and  every- 
thing else. 

"He  looked  steadily  at  the  Crucifix.  You 
could  see  his  big  shoulders  shaking,  with  some 
emotion  that  I  have  no  name  for.  Then  he 
dropped  the  Crucifix  slowly  back  upon  the  body, 
stooped  swiftly  and  kissed  his  brother's  forehead, 
turned,  reached  out  a  hand  for  the  irons  they  had 


120        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

ready,  and  walked  quietly  out  with  them.  I 
guess  I  never  knew  the  man,"  he  concluded 
slowly. 

"No  man,"  said  the  Dean  quietly,  "knows  any 
other  man  in  this  world.  But  what  of  the  men? 
There  was  no  fighting,  no  attempt  to  rescue  him 
from  the  law?" 

"A  dozen  times,"  answered  the  young  priest, 
"on  the  way  down  State  Street  and  over  into 
Court  Street  the  crowd  gathered  and  could  have 
swept  his  guards  under  foot.  But  he  shouted 
and  waved  them  back  each  time,  and  they  obeyed. 
I  say  I  do  not  understand  it  at  all." 

"No—"  the  Dean  said  reflectively.  "But  I 
fear  there  is  more.  I  do  not  see  the  end." 

Father  Driscoll  munched  silently  through  a 
belated  supper.  Though  he  had  eaten  scarcely 
anything  throughout  the  day,  he  had  very  little 
interest  in  the  food  before  him.  More  than  any- 
thing else  in  the  world  he  wanted  sleep,  but  there 
was  in  the  back  of  his  consciousness  something 
telling  him  that  he  must  not  have  it,  that  there 
were  yet  things  to  be  done,  that  his  day's  work 
was  not  over. 

Father  Huetter  had  gone  to  lead  the  Office  of 
the  Holy  Name  Society  by  the  side  of  the  young 
Loyd's  body.  The  Dean,  settling  himself  down 
in  his  own  room  for  Vespers  and  Complin,  found 
that  he  could  hardly  force  his  mind  out  of  the 
circle  which  it  had  been  making  all  night  and  all 
day. 


THE  WILL  OF  GOD  121 

The  little  clock  was  striking  nine  as  he  arose 
and  put  down  the  book.  He  would  go  directly 
to  bed.  But  he  reached  for  his  wide  felt  hat, 
called  his  ancient  housekeeper  to  instruct  her  as 
to  where  Father  Huetter  might  be  found  in  case 
of  an  urgent  sick-call,  and,  avoiding  the  patent 
disapproval  of  her  eye,  stepped  quickly  out  to  the 
street. 

Milton  was  apparently  settling  down  into  its 
regular  nightly  quiet  as  the  Dean  crossed  the  up- 
per part  of  State  Street  and  took  a  darkened 
short  cut  over  into  Court  Street.  But  to  the 
Dean's  taut-strung  nerves  the  quiet  was  too 
heavy.  It  was  unnatural;  it  brooded.  True, 
one  could  reflect,  men  had  stood  on  street  corners 
now  for  the  last  four  months,  nearly,  and  talked 
of  their  strike  and  of  the  incidents  and  struggles 
and  hopes  of  it,  until  you  might  suppose  that 
they  had  said  all  the  words  that  could  be  said 
about  it.  But  the  Dean  was  not  convinced. 
The  same  sense  of  indefinable  danger  that  had 
made  him  leave  the  house  followed  him  through 
the  quiet  dark. 

He  passed  the  gaunt  old  figure  of  the  court 
house,  with  its  one  great  eye  blinking  out 
through  the  nearly  naked  branches  of  the  maples, 
and  turned  the  corner  into  Reynold  Street  where 
the  squat,  dark  heap  of  the  jail  backed  up  against 
the  rear  of  the  county  buildings.  There  was  no 
light  from  the  jail  and  the  street  was  entirely  de- 
serted. The  Dean  had  hardly  expected  this,  for 


122        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

he  thought  it  likely  that  there  would  be  some  of 
the  men  standing  about  in  front  of  the  jail. 

He  stood  a  while,  undecided.  He  could  not 
go  home  without  somehow  trying  to  lay  his  finger 
on  the  pulse  of  this  vague  fear  that  followed  him. 
A  thin  streak  of  light  coming  from  behind  a  cur- 
tain of  the  warden's  outer  office  drew  him  to  step 
up  and  ring  sharply. 

A  low  excited  murmur  of  voices  from  within 
followed  his  ring,  and  then  a  challenge. 

"Father  Driscoll,"  he  answered  quietly. 

Fred  Wheeler,  the  warden,  pulled  the  door 
open  for  him,  and  as  he  walked  in  he  was  sur- 
prised to  find  John  Beals,  the  sheriff,  standing 
nervously  in  the  middle  of  the  room. 

Beals,  a  political  sheriff,  had  spent  most  of 
that  day  in  unusual  and  uncomfortable  proxi- 
mity to  a  shotgun.  He  had  been  certain  that 
some  attempt  would  be  made  to  free  Loyd.  In 
his  state  of  mind,  any  intrusion,  even  that  of  the 
old  priest,  was  a  cause  for  alarm. 

Father  Driscoll  apologized  so  profusely  and 
assumed  so  blandly  that  he  would  be  allowed  to 
see  Loyd  that  the  sheriff,  taken  off  his  mental 
feet,  did  not  know  how  to  refuse. 

Walking  down  the  corridor  of  the  jail,  the 
warden  said: 

"I'm  sorry,  Father,  but  you  know  we  wouldn't 
dare  open  a  cell  to-night,  or  I'd  bring  him  out 
to  the  office  to  you." 


THE  WILL  OF  GOD  123 

"Perfectly  right,  Fred,  I  only  want  a  minute 
with  him." 

Loyd  was  leaning  like  a  great,  loose- jointed 
animal  on  his  arms  which  lay  stretched  along  the 
heavy  iron  hinge-strap  of  his  grating.  In  the 
electric  light  from  a  single  bulb  at  the  end  of  the 
corridor  he  recognized  the  priest,  but  he  said 
nothing.  Wheeler  walked  away. 

"I  have  news  for  you,  Jimmie,"  said  the  Dean, 
putting  his  hand  through  the  bars  to  rest  on 
Loyd's  arm.  "The  Governor  will  send  troops — 
they  will  be  here  to-morrow — and  an  overhead 
force  to  take  charge  of  the  mill.  The  men  will 
go  to  work  at  once  and  operate  the  mill  until 
Sargent  gives  in  to  arbitration." 

"What  did  he  say  about  my  brother?"  Loyd 
questioned  fiercely,  straightening  himself  so  that 
his  shock  of  black  hair  touched  the  ceiling  of  his 
cell. 

"Why,  Jimmie,"  the  Dean  fell  back  a  little, 
"what  could  he  say?  He  will  investigate,  I 
know,  and  try  to  see  that  the  law  is — " 

"Law!"  Loyd  laughed  frightfully.  "There's 
no  law.  It's  a  lie!  My  innocent  brother  lies 
dead  in  my  house,  shot  dead  last  night  by  an 
officer  of  the  law.  The  man  who  shot  him  is 
walking  around  now  ready  to  kill  again.  And 
the  man  who  ordered  the  thing  is  away  from 
here,  but  he  can  order  other  killings.  Law! 
What  is  his  law?  The  law  of  money  and  of 


124        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

power  and  of  murder.  That's  his  law.  It 
works  for  him  just  as  I  have  worked  for  him.  It 
makes  him  rich  just  as  I  have  helped  to  make 
him  rich.  He  took  my  boyhood  and  my  chance 
in  life.  I  had  to  give  it  so  that  my  mother  and 
my  little  brother  could  live.  And  now,  with  his 
law,  he  has  taken  the  only  thing  that  I  loved— 
my  brother.  Why  ?  Why,  because  I  and  thou- 
sands of  other  fools  like  me  have  worked  for  him 
and  made  him  rich  so  that  he  could  buy  law  and 
kill  us  with  it  when  it  suited  him  to  do  it. 

"Haven't  I  worked  and  struggled  and  been 
abused  all  this  summer  trying  to  make  the  men 
starve  quietly,  when  there  was  food  about  them 
that  they  might  have  had  for  the  taking?  Why? 
All  so  that  John  Sargent's  law  might  be  kept. 
All  so  that  this  law  you  talk  about  might  be 
strong  enough  to  keep  me  in  jail  to-night. 

"And  do  you  think  I  did  not  all  the  time  know 
just  what  a  fool  I  was?  Did  I  not  see  that  I  was 
just  welding  the  chains  for  myself?  Doesn't 
every  man  see  it  that  works  at  another  man's 
machine  and  makes  money  for  that  other  man? 
Doesn't  he  know  that  he  is  just  giving  that  other 
man  a  grip  on  him?  Doesn't  he  know  that  every 
dollar  he  grinds  out  of  a  machine  for  another 
man  is  a  rivet  in  his  own  collar? 

"Know  it?  We  all  know  it.  And  yet  we  go 
on  doing  it.  We  go  on,  because  our  fathers  went 
on,  because  good  men,  like  you,  because  people, 


THE  WILL  OF  GOD  125 

because  Church,  because  everything  tells  us  to 
go  on." 

"But,"  the  Dean  put  in  quietly,  "the  Gov- 
ernor is  ready  to  use  the  power  of  the  State.  He 
will  do  all  that  can  be  done." 

"Can  he  give  me  back  my  brother's  life?  Can 
he  give  me  back  the  years  of  my  own  life? 
Last  night  it  was  my  brother.  If  John  Sargent 
wanted  me  killed  here  in  this  jail  to-night  he 
could  stage  it  and  go  free.  You  know  it.  The 
State  knows  it.  The  Governor  knows  it.  What 
does  he  do?" 

"Well,  at  least,  he  is  ready  to  take  the  one  step 
that  will  end  the  strike  and  put  things  back  where 
they  were." 

"Yes.  That's  what  he  wants.  That's  what 
everybody  wants;  things  back  where  they  were. 
Back  where  we  and  our  children — thank  God, 
I'll  never  have  one — may  be  worked  over  and 
over  again,  and  shot  in  the  end  if  it's  needed. 
Why  will  he  do  this?  And  what  will  he  do? 

"Why?  Will  he  do  it  because  he  cares  for  me 
or  my  kind?  No.  He'll  do  it  because  it's  a  big 
bold  play  that  can  one  day  make  Gordon  Fuller 
President  of  the  United  States.  He's  taking  a 
chance — a  big  chance.  But  he's  a  big  man,  and 
he's  willing  to  play.  But  that's  what  he's  doing, 
playing — with  the  lives  of  men.  For  what? 
For  Gordon  Fuller." 

"Even  if  it  were  true,  Jim — and  I  think  you 


126        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

are  mostly  wrong — I  have  belief  in  that  young 
man — it  is  the  one  thing  to  save  the  people  and 
stop  the  strike." 

"The  strike  is  ended." 

"What?  How?"  the  Dean  questioned  eag- 
erly. "What  do  you  mean?" 

"When  I  laid  down  the  Crucifix  on  my 
brother's  breast,  and  put  out  my  hands  for  the 
'bracelets,'  the  strike  was  over  then." 

"I  do  not  understand,  Jim."  The  Dean  spoke 
wonderingly,  but  he  had  already  begun  to  realize 
that  the  intangible  fear  that  had  taken  him  out  of 
his  house  when  he  had  not  meant  to  come  was 
founded  on  something  real. 

"The  strike  is  ended,"  said  Loyd  again.  "It 
will  finish  in  a  way  that  no  other  strike  ever  fin- 
ished in  this  world. 

"Do  you  think  that  after  we  have  fought  and 
starved  as  we  have  all  this  time  that  we  are  going 
back  to  work  under  the  old  conditions,  to  pile  up 
more  money  for  John  Sargent,  to  make  him 
stronger  to  fight  and  gouge  us  again?  Do  you 
think  I  left  my  dead  brother's  body  to  come  here 
quietly  and  wait  for  John  Sargent's  law  to  send 
me  to  State's  prison?  No.  I  came  at  the  time 
because  this  morning  we  were  not  ready  to  strike. 
Now  we  are  ready.  It  is  ten  o'clock  now.  In 
a  few  minutes  the  men  will  come  to  break  me 
out  from  here.  We  will  go  straight  to  the  mill, 
blow  in  the  gates,  overpower  Sargent's  guards  or 
kill  them. 


THE  WILL  OF  GOD  127 

"In  the  morning  we'll  not  only  have  the  mill  in 
our  hands  and  be  ready  to  run  it,  but  we'll  have 
every  store  and  bank  and  public  utility  in  the 
town. 

"You  don't  understand  yet.  This  is  a  one- 
mill  town,  a  one-man  town.  The  banks,  the 
trolley  cars,  the  business  concessions  belong  to 
John  Sargent.  We  made  them  for  him.  There 
are  nearly  four  thousand  of  us.  There  are  not 
four  hundred  able-bodied  men  in  the  town  who 
do  not  belong  to  us.  Who  is  to  stop  us  doing 
what  we  wish?" 

The  Dean  leaned  back  against  the  opposite 
wall  of  the  corridor.  He  saw  the  monumental 
simplicity  of  the  thing  which  Loyd  had  outlined. 
He  knew  how  it  would  appeal  to  the  daring 
imagination  of  the  big,  fearless  man  before  him. 
And  he  did  not  doubt  that  he  would  go  about  it 
simply  and  literally,  though  death  stood  in  the 
way.  For  a  moment  he  was  stupefied  by  the 
bold  clearness  of  the  idea.  Then  his  mind  leaped 
to  the  terrifying  consequences.  He  saw  all  the 
great  power  of  the  whole  State,  roused  by  money 
and  the  fear  of  money,  prepared  to  pour  its 
forces  down  upon  the  little  city.  It  would  be 
war!  And  he  knew  that  Loyd  and  the  men 
would  fight  to  the  end. 

"Jim,"  he  gasped,  "do  you  know  what  it  would 
mean?  It  would  mean  civil  war." 

"It  would  mean  something"  said  Loyd  shortly. 
"And  that  is  more  than  all  the  Labor  talk  and 


128        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

uplift  and  Socialism  has  meant  yet  or  ever  will 
mean  unless  men  are  willing  to  pay  the  price  and 
take  the  risk  for  the  thing  they  want." 

"And  can  you  say  what  is  the  price?  Because 
life  is  bitter  to  you  and  because  you  would  throw 
it  away  cheaply,  do  you  dare  to  say  what  life  is 
worth  to  other  men?  And  are  you  ready  to  lead 
them  to  destruction?" 

"What  shall  we  do,  then?  Do  you  want  us 
to  settle  down  quietly  to  grind  those  lives  out  for- 
ever, to  see  our  brothers  murdered,  to  see  our- 
selves sent  to  prison?  Why  don't  you  go  farther 
and  tell  us  to  bow  our  head  and  say,  'It's  the 
will  of  God;  let  us  suffer  and  die  peaceably'? 
No.  Father,  in  spite  of  what  you  know  and  have 
heard  of  me,  I  love  my  Church  and  my  Faith, 
but  no  church  and  no  faith  and  no  priest  can  tell 
me  that  it  is  the  will  of  God  that  the  children 
should  go  hungry  because  of  John  Sargent's 
greed,  or  that  my  brother  should  be  killed  by  his 
hired  murderers." 

"No,  it  is  not  the  will  of  God.  It  is  the  short- 
sighted wickedness  of  men." 

"Then  it  has  to  be  met  in  the  one  way  that  it 
can  be  met." 

"Wickedness  with  wickedness,  greed  with 
greed,  murder  with  more  murder?  No. 
Neither  is  that  the  will  of  God. 

"But  it  is  the  will  of  God  that  men  should 
meet  the  hard  and  terrible  facts  of  life  with  a 
great  and  patient  bravery.  God  knows  it  is  not 


THE  WILL  OF  GOD  129 

in  my  heart  to  preach  to  you,  when  your  own 
heart  is  desolate  in  its  grief.  What  can  I  say? 
Has  not  my  own  old  heart  felt  the  rage  of  pas- 
sion and  the  leaping  flame  of  anger  at  the  things 
that  I  have  seen?" 

"Yes,  and  that  flame  is  going  to  lick  up  this 
whole  country,"  said  Loyd,  gripping  and  shak- 
ing the  bars  of  his  cell  door.  "Am  I  the  only 
man  who  is  suffering?  I  haven't  got  a  hungry 
kid  chewing  at  the  bed-sheet  in  his  sleep.  I  am 
not  raising  a  family  of  boys  and  girls  to  be 
thrown  into  the  hopper  of  John  Sargent's  mill. 
But  I'm  not  a  wind-jamming  Socialist  either.  I 
can  do  this  thing  to-night  and  I'm  going  to  do  it. 
It's  a  thing  that's  never  been  done  before  and  it 
will  light  up  this  State  and  this  country.  What 
is  my  life?  What  are  a  few  dozen  lives,  if  they 
go  to  the  wiping  out  of  slavery  in  this  country?" 

"Anger  piled  on  anger,  Jimmie,  wrong  upon 
wrong,  never  made  anything  right  in  this  world. 
You  are  thinking  of  a  cause.  You  honestly  be- 
lieve that  what  you  would  do  to-night  would  help 
to  better  things.  And,  in  the  end,  it  would,  per- 
haps. But  the  strongest  thought  of  all  you  have 
is  that  it  would  ruin  John  Sargent." 

"Yes!"  Loyd  shouted,  "I'd  leave  him  without 
a  dollar  in  the  world.  And  if  you  were  in  my 
place  you'd  feel  just  as  I  do." 

"And  if  I  did?  Would  it  be  right?  Let  us 
leave  it,"  said  the  Dean,  dropping  his  voice,  "to 
the  boy  that  is  at  rest  to-night — Harry,  with  his 


130        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

fresh  and  laughing  heart.  Life  was  dearer  to 
him,  and  sweeter,  than  to  you  or  me.  Leave  it 
to  him.  Would  he  have  you  do  this  thing  with 
anger  and  rancor  in  your  heart?  No.  He 
would  beg  you  on  his  knees  to  do  the  brave 
thing." 

Loyd  stiffened  as  though  he  had  been  struck. 

"You  think,"  the  old  priest  went  on  calmly, 
"because  you  are  ready  to  throw  your  life  away 
or  make  yourself  an  outlaw  to  the  world  about 
you,  that  you  are  doing  the  courageous  thing. 
He,  even  in  his  boy's  wisdom,  could  have  told 
you  that  there  was  a  yet  braver  thing  to  do — to 
stay  here  and  clear  your  name  of  this  thing  as 
you  can  easily  do,  and — obey  the  laws  of  God." 

"They're  not  the  laws  of  God.  They're  John 
Sargent's;  they  work  for  him." 

"They  are  the  laws  of  God,  Jimmie — Ten  of 
them.  And  John  Sargent  can  no  more  break 
them  with  impunity  than  can  you  or  I.  You 
know  that." 

Loyd  said  nothing,  but  tapped  significantly 
on  the  bars  of  the  door. 

"I  see  what  you  mean,  Jim;  but  you  know 
what  I  mean,  too.  Suffering  there  is.  Injus- 
tice there  is.  Wrong  there  is.  Why?  Because 
a  man  is  breaking  the  laws  of  God ;  breaking  one 
of  the  Ten  Commandments.  Government,  Poli- 
tics, Socialism,  Economics — blow  the  fog  away 
and  you  find  a  man  stealing,  breaking  God's  law. 
Set  up  another  system  and  you'll  find  other  men 


THE  WILL  OF  GOD  131 

doing  the  same.     And  you  would  cure  it  all  to- 
night by  breaking  more  of  those  laws  of  God? 

"Jimmie,  Jimmie,  can  you  not  see  that  the 
lesson  is  longer  and  harder  even  than  that? 

"You  say  that  you  looked  at  the  Crucifix  this 
morning.  What  did  you  see?  You  saw  a  Man 
loving  justice  and  hating  iniquity.  Every  great 
and  big  man  does  that  always.  He  saw  injus- 
tice and  wrong  and  suffering  all  about  Him. 
Did  He  'take  the  sword'?  Did  He  take  the 
'twelve  legions  of  angels'  to  right  these  things? 
No.  He  took  the  other  way,  the  way  that  leads 
not  over  the  bodies  of  men  but  through  the  ways 
of  their  hearts. 

"Can  you  bring  anything  out  of  force  and  riot 
and  bloodshed  except  the  things  that  you  put 
into  them — anger  and  hate  and  the  desire  for  re- 
venge? They  breed  each  other. 

"There  is  one  way,  the  patient,  the  big,  the  en- 
during way.  The  law,  in  the  hands  of  the  Gov- 
ernor, will  be  helping  you  to-morrow.  Nine 
millions  of  people,  the  sovereigns  of  the  State, 
are  with  you  at  heart.  Keeping  the  law  of  God 
— fight,  work,  teach,  and  vote.  But  keep  the 
law  of  God.  For  every  law  that  is  broken, 
whether  in  the  name  of  Labor  or  of  Capital,  of 
Socialism  or  of  Private  Right,  a  heavy  toll  is 
taken.  And  it  is  taken  off  the  weak" 

Loyd  strained  uneasily  along  the  bars,  but  still 
he  said  nothing. 

"James."  said  the  Dean  after  a  little  pause, 


132        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"you  are  here  accused  of  something  you  did  not 
do.  That  has  happened  and  might  happen  to 
any  man.  But  if  you  go  out  of  here  to-night, 
you,  who  have  never  broken  any  law,  will  be 
branded  as  a  jail-breaker.  Will  it  do  any  good 
to  the  cause  for  which  you  are  ready  to  die  if  you 
go  marked  as  an  outlaw?  Will  it?  It  will  not. 
And  you  shall  not  do  it.  I  can  stop  you  and  I 
will." 

"How?" 

A  heavy  thud  and  a  grinding,  tearing  crash 
shook  the  building. 

"There  they  are  now,"  said  Loyd.  "They  did 
as  I  told  them.  There  was  no  warning.  They 
are  in  the  office  by  now." 

The  Dean  hurried  down  through  the  corridor 
to  the  office.  He  swung  open  the  door  between 
the  inner  and  the  outer  offices,  and  stopped  short. 

On  the  floor  of  the  outer  office  lay  the  heavy 
street  door.  On  top  of  it  lay  the  long  iron 
tongue  of  a  reaper.  It  was  plain  that  the  men 
had  run  up  stealthily  and  rammed  the  door  down 
with  a  single  blow  of  the  tongue  and  had  leaped 
into  the  room  after  it. 

A  dozen  or  fifteen  had  crowded  in  and  were 
half-way  across  the  room.  There  they  stood,  for 
the  moment,  saying  nothing. 

Along  one  wall  of  the  office  four  deputies  were 
ranged,  with  rifles  pointing  dead  at  the  group  of 
men.  At  the  Dean's  left  hand  stood  Wheeler 
and  the  sheriff,  with  their  shotguns  also  trained 


THE  WILL  OF  GOD  133 

upon  the  men.  But  the  sheriff  gave  no  word  to 
fire.  The  Dean  at  first  sight  thought  that  Beals 
was  merely  stupid  with  freight.  But  a  second 
look  at  the  men  in  front  showed  something  else. 

Andrew  Tinney  and  Joe  Kolakouvski,  two 
giant  molders,  were  in  front.  Behind  them,  his 
squat,  double- jointed  body  screened  by  their  long 
legs,  was  little  Joe  Page,  the  town  dwarf,  who 
had  once  been  kicked  by  John  Sargent. 

In  one  hand  the  dwarf  held  a  stick  of  dyna- 
mite with  a  common  fire-cracker  fuse  taped  into 
it.  In  the  other  he  had  a  little  stick  of  burning 
punk.  The  crude  simplicity  of  the  thing  made, 
it  just  so  much  more  terrible.  Any  boy  could 
have  thought  of  it. 

No  man  was  ready  to  pull  a  trigger.  The  sit- 
uation was  too  obvious  to  anyone  who  knew  the 
character  of  the  little  half -man  who  held  those 
things  in  his  hands.  Only  one  shot  would  ever 
be  fired. 

"Bring  Loyd  out,  Beals,"  said  Tinney.  "Or 
give  over  the  keys." 

"The  keys,"  said  Kolakouvski,  glowering 
down  the  eye  of  the  sheriff's  gun. 

Beals  stood,  futilely  holding  his  gun  at  aim. 
He  seemed  unable  to  do  more. 

"Give  them  to  me,"  whispered  the  Dean  at  his 
ear — "the  keys;  they  will  not  try  to  take  them 
from  me." 

The  sheriff,  still  pointing  his  gun  wildly, 
reached  for  the  keys  that  hung  at  Wheeler's  belt 


134        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

and  passed  them  over  to  the  Dean.  The  act  was 
purely  mechanical.  The  man's  hand  merely  fol- 
lowed the  first  suggestion  that  his  mind  had  been 
able  to  answer. 

The  Dean  beckoned  the  group  of  men  and  it 
moved  across  the  room,  still  screening  the  dwarf 
who  padded  along  steadily,  holding  his  two  hands 
wide  apart. 

Quietly  and  without  opposition  the  crowd  fol- 
lowed the  priest  through  the  inner  office  and 
down  the  corridor. 

The  Dean  worked  quickly,  trying  one  key 
after  another  in  the  lock  of  Loyd's  door,  talking 
as  he  worked. 

"Jimmie,  when  I  have  found  the  right  key," 
he  said,  pulling  out  one  key  and  inserting  an- 
other, "you  will  be  free  to  go  out  and  begin  the 
work  you  have  in  mind.  You  will  be  free  of 
everything  except  the  law  of  God.  I  cannot  free 
you  from  that.  I  am  freeing  you  from  this  law 
of  man.  You  will  not  be  breaking  jail.  The 
door  will  be  standing  open  for  you.  I  am  taking 
this  all  upon  myself.  I  will  answer  for  all  of 
this  to  the  law. 

"When  you  go  out  from  here,  if  you  do  wrong, 
if  you  break  a  law  of  God,  if  you  kill,  then  I  shall 
be  as  guilty  as  you.  The  sin  that  is  yours  will 
be  upon  my  soul. 

"These  men  will  do  nothing  without  you.  All 
rests  on  you:  life  and  death;  shame,  terror,  and 
innocent  blood.  And  on  me  it  rests. 


THE  WILL  OF  GOD  135 

"Will  you  stay  and  take  the  long  way  in  pa- 
tience and  courage  and  hope,  or  will  you — there, 
the  door  is  open  at  last — will  you  take  the  short 
way  to  ruin  and  wrong?  You  take  me  with  you 
either  way." 

He  pushed  the  door  open  and  Loyd  stepped 
upon  the  threshold.  In  the  light,  the  two  men 
eyed  each  other,  breathing  hard,  for  a  full 
minute. 

Then  Loyd  looked  down  the  corridor  into  the 
puzzled,  wondering  faces  of  the  men  crowding 
there.  He  looked  again  at  the  old  man  whom 
he  had  all  his  life  revered  and  loved.  His  eyes 
dropped.  His  big  shoulders  fell.  And,  swing- 
ing on  his  heel,  he  turned  back  into  the  cell  and 
dropped  heavily  upon  his  bunk. 


CHAPTER  VI 
"GOD  LIVES" 

a  curiously  single-minded  thing  a 
crowd  of  people  is  anyway,"  John  Sar- 
gent remarked  casually,  to  the  world  in  general. 
He  was  standing  at  the  window  of  his  private 
office  in  the  plant  of  the  Milton  Machinery  Com- 
pany, looking  down  at  Harry  Loyd's  funeral 
procession  as  it  took  its  slow  way  past  the  mill 
and  up  the  River  Road  to  the  hills  and  the  Catho- 
lic cemetery.  His  secretary  was  standing  a  little 
back  of  him,  looking  over  his  shoulder ;  but  as  the 
remark  was  not  addressed  particularly  to  him  he 
did  not  volunteer  any  comment. 

"Just  now  that  crowd  is  engaged  in  the  busi- 
ness of  mourning.  They  wouldn't  turn  aside 
from  that  for  any  other  business  in  the  world. 
If  you  could  get  his  attention  long  enough,  any 
one  of  them  would  tell  you  with  a  curse  that  I 
was  responsible  for  that  boy's  death.  Yet  if  they 
knew  that  I  was  up  here  in  this  window,  they 
wouldn't  turn  away  from  their  morning's  work 
of  mourning,  even  to  shake  a  fist  at  me. 

"And  they  have  to  stage  a  pageant.  They 
couldn't  get  expression  for  their  grief  any  other 

136 


"GOD  LIVES"  137 

way.  Why  do  they  have  to  go  back  to  primitive 
things  the  moment  they  are  in  earnest  about  any- 
thing? I  don't  mind  the  Poles.  They  prob- 
ably saw  things  like  that  when  they  were  grow- 
ing up  in  the  old  country.  And  the  Italians  just 
naturally  fall  into  procession,  for  the  sake  of  the 
thing.  But  two-thirds  of  those  people  are  Irish- 
Americans  of  the  second  or  third  generation. 
They  never  saw  anything  like  that.  They're 
more  sophisticated,  with  their  talk  and  their  read- 
ing and  Socialism  and  all,  than  the  average 
Yankee  American.  If  anything,  they're  more 
American  than  he  is.  Yet  there  they  are,  giving 
that  boy  just  such  a  funeral  as  an  Irish  martyr 
would  have  had  six  generations  ago. 

"They  never  saw  it  done;  but  you  see  they 
know  how.  That's  why  they  never  really 
change.  At  bottom  they're  the  most  powerful 
conservative  force  in  the  world.  Their  minds 
change  and  their  talk  changes,  but  their  atavistic 
instincts  never.  And  they  are  really  governed 
by  those. 

"I  guess  I  won't  need  you,  after  all,"  he  said, 
switching  abruptly  to  Hilton,  the  secretary. 
"You  needn't  wait." 

Hilton  started  almost  guiltily.  He  had  not 
been  listening  to  what  Sargent  had  been  saying. 
He  had  lately  been  interesting  himself  in  the 
idea  of  thought  transference  or  control — the  in- 
fluence which  many  minds  thinking  the  same 
thought  may  have  upon  the  mind  of  one  person 


138        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

upon  whom  their  thought  is  fixed.  He  firmly 
believed  that  a  number  of  minds  thinking  one 
thought  about  a  given  person  would  make  that 
person  come  to  think  the  same  thing  about  him- 
self. He  considered  the  four  or  five  thousand 
people  passing  by,  all  thinking  John  Sargent  a 
murderer.  And  yet  their  thought  seemed  to 
take  no  effect  upon  his  employer's  mind.  He 
was  brought  back  so  sharply  by  Sargent's  dis- 
missal that  for  an  instant  he  was  not  sure  that 
he  had  not  spoken  his  thought  aloud.  But  he 
caught  himself  and  turned  hastily  to  the  door. 

Sargent  still  stood  looking  out  of  the  window. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "they  are  a  wonder.  They'll 
never  change.  They're  always  Irish  and  Catho- 
lic. And  you  never  can  tell  whether  it's  the 
Catholic  in  them  that  keeps  them  Irish,  or  the 
Irish  in  them  that  keeps  them  Catholic.  If  they 
lose  one  they  lose  both,  generally.  And  then, 
well,  then  they're  nothing,  they  don't  count. 

"Take  the  old  priest  trudging  at  the  head  of 
them  there.  He's  wider  awake,  he  sees  farther 
ahead  in  the  problems  of  to-day,  than  any  man 
I  know.  But  you  could  set  him  back  three  hun- 
dred years  and  he'd  go  right  along  with  the  pic- 
ture just  the  same. 

"He'll  talk  at  the  cemetery,  probably.  I  won- 
der what  he  will  have  to  say  about  me.  Most 
likely  not  a  word.  He'll  just  ding-dong  away  at 
the  old  'dust  to  dust'  and  resurrection  business. 
Yet  if  he'd  take  a  fling  at  the  bloodthirsty 


"GOD  LIVES"  139 

money-power,  he  could  have  three-column  leads 
in  the  New  York  papers  to-morrow.  But  he 
won't.  He'll  just  stick  to  his  business  of  bury- 
ing a  body  and  promising  Heaven  to  a  souL 
And  they're  just  like  him.  I  could  go  up  there 
and  stand  among  them  and  they  wouldn't  notice 
me:  because  they're  engaged  in  the  single  busi- 
ness of  burying  a  man." 

It  was,  indeed,  an  unusual  and  striking  proces- 
sion, this  which  John  Sargent  reviewed  and  re- 
flected upon. 

A  funeral  in  Milton,  where  practically  all  the 
men  and  a  great  many  women  were  due  to  punch 
a  time-clock  at  a  certain  hour  every  weekday 
morning  of  their  lives,  was  generally  a  lonely- 
looking  matter;  reduced,  as  it  must  be,  to  the 
few  carriages  of  those  who  were  absolutely  bound 
to  go. 

This  was  different.  It  did  not  belong  to  the 
relatives  of  Harry  Loyd  to  say  what  his  funeral 
should  be.  He  had  died  not  merely  as  Harry 
Loyd,  but  as  a  victim.  Any  one  of  the  four 
thousand  men  and  boys  who  now  followed  his 
body  might  have  been  chosen,  by  accident  and 
John  Sargent's  guards,  for  slaughter.  So  it  was 
as  though  death  had  taken  a  man  or  boy  out  of 
every  family  of  them  all. 

On  their  shoulders  men  carried  the  body  all  the 
weary  length  of  the  way.  Not  a  wheel  was  al- 
lowed to  stir  in  that  part  of  the  town  where  it 
should  pass.  So  silent  was  the  crowd  as  it 


140        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

moved  down  the  street  that  the  rattle  of  beads 
slipping  through  hard  hands  could  be  heard  by 
those  on  the  sidewalks. 

A  regiment  of  State  troops  had  just  put  the 
town  under  martial  law  and  were  stationing 
themselves  at  different  points  to  enforce  that  law. 
These  soldiers  had  come  to  try  an  experiment 
which  the  men  in  the  procession,  as  labor  men, 
had  all  their  lives  been  clamoring  for.  Yet  the 
men  did  not  raise  an  eye  to  look  at  the  soldiers. 
As  Sargent  had  remarked,  they  had  but  one  busi- 
ness in  hand. 

Harry  Loyd  had  been  killed,  as  every  man  be- 
lieved, by  the  orders  of  John  Sargent.  Jim 
Loyd,  the  man  who  had  held  them  together,  and 
had  made  such  a  strike  as  theirs  possible,  and  had 
somehow  fed  them  such  food  as  they  had  had  for 
months,  Jim  Loyd  was  in  jail,  through  John 
Sargent's  contrivance.  But  no  man  raised  his 
head  to  look  at  John  Sargent's  window. 

Protestants  there  were,  men  of  every  faith, 
and  men  of  no  faith,  who  walked  silent  and 
bowed  in  that  march,  and  did  not  know  what  was 
upon  them.  The  great  spiritualizing,  visualiz- 
ing power  of  Catholic  faith,  which  strips  death 
of  its  sentimentality  and  shows  it  for  what  it  is, 
the  one  elemental  fact  with  which  men  have  to 
deal,  was  at  work  upon  these  people.  It  was 
showing  them  and  pressing  into  their  hearts  the 
eternal  lesson  of  the  littleness  of  a  regiment  of 
soldiers,  of  Jim  Loyd  in  jail,  or  of  John  Sargent 


"GOD  LIVES"  141 

in  his  mill,  compared  with  the  dignity  of  young 
Harry  Loyd  in  death. 

John  Sargent,  like  most  of  our  men  large 
enough  to  live  in  the  glare  of  daily  newspaper 
discussion,  had  nothing  but  contempt  for  criti- 
cism for  or  against  himself.  It  never  reached 
him.  If  the  Angel  had  come  to  him  with  the 
Book  of  Doom  and  shown  him  the  record  he  had 
gained  in  that  quarter,  he  would  have  answered 
that  all  men  who  do  things  in  the  world  are 
blamed,  naturally. 

Here,  however,  was  a  great  crowd  of  men  and 
women  whom  he,  John  Sargent,  had  been  feed- 
ing all  their  lives.  They  had  been  so  reared  that 
they  had  always  had  to  consider  him  the  most  im- 
portant man  in  the  world.  No  government,  no 
power  could  exercise  over  their  lives  a  force  so 
compelling,  for  happiness  or  for  suffering,  as 
could  he  with  a  single  word.  For,  really,  noth- 
ing was  important  to  them  except  a  pay  en- 
velope. Good  government  or  bad,  heat  or  cold, 
flood  or  drought — all  these  could  be  dealt  with  if 
the  envelope  were  right.  A  word  from  John 
Sargent  could  at  any  time  make  a  man  or  a  fam- 
ily reasonably  content  and  happy.  A  word 
from  him  could  plunge  a  man  or  a  family  or  the 
whole  of  the  little  city  into  want  and  misery.  It 
was  not  exactly  the  ancient  unanswering  kingly 
power  of  life  and  death;  but  it  sometimes 
amounted  to  that,  in  effect,  and  was  certainly  as 
near  to  it  as  any  man  may  come  in  this  day.  To 


142        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

all  intents,  John  Sargent  was  the  lord  and  mas- 
ter of  everybody  in  that  long  line  of  men. 

And  they  walked  past  him  and  his  mill,  giving 
no  thought  to  him  or  it.  He  could  not  under- 
stand that.  If  they  had  turned,  as  they  passed, 
and  cursed  him,  he  could  have  explained  it: 
"Things  went  that  way  in  the  world."  But  that 
they  could  ignore  him,  could  put  him  out  of  their 
minds,  was  not  to  be  understood. 

They  were  intent  upon  a  matter  in  which  he 
certainly  was  concerned,  and  they  forgot  him. 
It  was — disconcerting,  that  that  great  crowd 
could  be  so  heart-and-soul  intent  upon  the  bury- 
ing of  a  mere  boy  as  to  forget  John  Sargent.  It 
disturbed  him.  It  seemed  to  cheapen  his  power 
over  them.  And  it  was  a  lonesome  business,  too, 
watching  this  crowd  that  had  forgotten  him. 
He  seemed  to  be  the  only  man  in  the  town  who 
was  not  in  the  procession. 

No — there  was  another  man  who  should  have 
been  in  that  procession  and  who  was  not  there — 
Jim  Loyd.  He  was  in  jail.  And  there  was  an- 
other whom  Sargent  missed,  a  girl.  He  would 
have  known  her  by  sight,  for  he  had  often  seen 
her.  She  had  charge  of  one  of  the  big  rooms  of 
the  twine  mill  down  at  the  lower  end  of  the 
works.  She  had  worked  there  since  her  child- 
hood. Gaylor — that  was  her  name,  he  remem- 
bered. Harry  Loyd  had  spoken  to  her  just  a 
few  minutes  before  dying.  Sargent  found  him- 
self wondering  what  the  young  fellow  had  said. 


"GOD  LIVES"  143 

He  shook  himself,  left  the  window,  and  sat  down 
discontentedly  at  his  desk. 

"What  a  world  of  mawkish  sentiment,"  he 
grumbled,  "is  wasted  on  last  words  and  relics  and 
things.  The  fellow  just  said  some  fool  thing 
and — stepped  off  into  the  dark.  And  she'll 
frame  those  words  in  her  heart.  Fifty  years 
from  now  she'll  still  be  taking  them  down  and 
dusting  them  and  weeping  over  them. 

"This  is  a  lonesome  business.  I  believe  I'll  go 
and  see  Loyd.  He's  not  a  cheerful  brute,  but,  at 
least,  he'd  curse  me  with  some  show  of  interest. 

"I  wonder  why  I  can't  help  liking  that  fellow. 
He  hates  me ;  always  did  hate  me.  And  now,  if 
it  wasn't  for  his  religion,  he'd  execute  me  with 
his  two  big  hands,  for  the  murder  of  his  brother. 

"Now  that's  what  I  want  to  know.  The 
Church  or  the  religion  or  the  superstition- — 
whatever  it  is — that  can  hold  Jim  Loyd's  hands 
off  my  throat  ought  to  be  able  to  hold  the  world. 
Why  can't  it?  And  why  doesn't  it?" 

The  wonder  of  which  Sargent  had  spoken  to 
himself,  that  these  people  in  whose  lives  he  was 
so  large  a  factor  should  be  able  to  put  him  so 
completely  out  of  mind  at  such  a  time,  must  al- 
ways be  unexplainable  to  the  outsider.  These 
people  were  just  a  crowd  of  Catholic  men  and 
women,  saying  their  prayers,  simply  and  without 
any  self-consciousness,  for  the  soul  of  a  boy  who 
had  gone  to  his  death  without  warning.  The 
things,  remote  and  immediate,  leading  up  to  his 


144        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

death  were,  to  them,  important  in  their  way. 
The  fact  that  any  one,  or  that  many,  of  them- 
selves might  have  fallen  in  the  same  way;  that, 
too,  was  important.  But  the  one  thing  that  put 
all  other  things  aside  was  that  the  boy  had  gone 
without  a  sacrament. 

Every  man's  own  problem,  whether  of  work  or 
worry  or  danger,  fades  to  a  very  small  signifi- 
cance in  the  Catholic  mind  when  placed  beside 
the  idea  of  a  soul's  going  before  God  unshriven. 
The  thought  revolts  the  whole  nature  of  the 
Catholic. 

The  foundation,  in  human  nature,  of  the  same 
thought  terrifies  every  man  in  the  world  when 
he  thinks  of  dying.  But  only  the  Catholic 
knows  what  it  really  means.  The  Protestant, 
the  Pagan,  if  he  prays,  asks  not  to  die  without  a 
loving  hand  to  support  his  head  and  to  close  his 
eyes.  It  is  the  only  sacrament  of  love  and  for- 
giveness and  blessing  that  he  knows  about. 
Whatever  he  may  call  it,  his  soul  cringes  in  the 
fear  of  dying  unblessed. 

From  Father  Driscoll,  walking  at  the  head  of 
the  coffin,  to  the  last  Catholic  child,  trailing  away 
at  the  end  of  the  procession,  every  soul  was  awed 
and  absorbed  in  that  one  idea — that  a  life  should 
thus  be  snatched  out  of  the  world.  Harry  Loyd, 
as  a  part  of  life,  as  a  man  who  had  been  deliber- 
ately murdered  or  had  been  killed  by  the  acciden- 
tal discharge  of  a  gun  in  the  hands  of  one  of  John 


"GOD  LIVES"  145 

Sargent's  guards,   could  be   forgotten  for  the 
time. 

The  Catholic  mind,  trained  as  it  is  and  steeped 
in  the  Mysteries,  the  mind  that  is  illumined,  for 
instance,  to  sense  the  Real  Presence  under  the 
veil  of  bread,  looks  naturally  through  the  attend- 
ant wrappings  of  death,  sees  the  body  tragedy 
for  what  it  is,  but  knows  that  the  soul  experience 
is  the  reality.  This  is  why — and  the  outsider  is 
never  able  to  understand  it — a  crowd  of  Catholics 
can  walk  the  street  and  pray  as  unaffectedly  as 
if  each  were  kneeling  alone  in  the  dark.  It  is  not 
mysticism  in  any  usual  sense.  It  is  not  mysti- 
cism at  all.  Your  Catholic  is  the  veriest  realist 
of  all  the  world.  But  the  real  for  him  has  infi- 
nitely wider  meaning  than  it  has  for  his  neigh- 
bors. That  is  the  difference. 

Jane  Loyd  knelt  alone  at  the  head  of  the  coffin 
when  it  had  come  to  rest  over  the  grave.  So  she 
had  walked  alone  all  the  way  from  her  home  to 
the  church  and  from  the  church  here.  Her  grief 
was  her  own.  She  was  in  every  way  the  sister  of 
the  big,  grim  man  who  had  now  for  four  months 
been  the  body  and  soul  of  the  strike  in  Milton — 
Jim  Loyd,  who  was  now  in  jail  accused,  falsely, 
as  all  knew,  of  having  conspired  to  blow  up  John 
Sargent's  mill.  She  was  a  tall,  tense-faced,  dark 
girl,  as  like  her  elder  brother  as  a  woman  is  ever 
like  a  man.  Neither  of  them  had  ever  thought 


146        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

of  depending  upon  any  one  in  the  world  for  any- 
thing. The  young  brother,  Harry,  had  been  her 
care  since  the  time  when  Jim  Loyd  had  been  big 
enough  to  go  to  work  in  John  Sargent's  mill. 

The  mill  had  taken  the  years  of  her  own  girl- 
hood and  turned  them  into  a  mere  succession  of 
gray,  slavish  days,  which  began  and  ended  with 
the  punching  of  a  clock.  The  mill  had  taken  her 
father.  The  mill  had  taken  this  brother,  her 
baby,  from  her.  The  mill  and  John  Sargent, 
under  the  name  of  law,  had,  in  the  very  hour  of 
her  speechless  grief,  taken  her  big  brother  from 
her  side.  But  none  of  these  things  had  place  in 
her  mind.  They  were  the  mere  marks  and  hedg- 
ings  of  life,  some  of  them  inevitable,  some  of 
them  the  patent  sins  of  men. 

The  reality  was  in  following  the  soul  of  the 
merry-eyed  young  brother — as  she  had  so  many 
times  followed  the  ways  of  his  busy  little  feet — 
up  the  high,  dim  path,  to  God.  She  had  business 
there.  She  had  explanations  to  make.  Certain 
things  must  be  made  clear.  God  should  know 
that  the  boy  had  not  had  the  best  of  chances. 
Many  times  she  had  been  tired  at  night  and  had 
not  seen  that  he  learned  his  Catechism.  She 
was  hard  sometimes,  she  explained ;  it  was  not  al- 
ways easy  for  her  to  be  merry  and  laugh  with 
him;  and  he  had  always  thought  that  life  was  a 
laugh  and  a  whistle  and  a  little  dance-step.  He 
was  careless  sometimes;  but  God  must  under- 
stand that  it  was  not  that  the  boy  did  not  care. 


"GOD  LIVES"  147 

He  did  care.  But  he  forgot,  sometimes ;  all  boys 
forget.  She  had  not  been  able  to  give  him  what 
a  mother  could  have  given.  His  mother,  she  was 
in  Heaven,  she  could  tell  God  of  the  things  that 
Jane  had  not  known  how  to  give.  Or  Mary,  the 
great  Mother  of  all;  she  would  know  about  these 
things;  she  could  tell. 

Dean  Driscoll,  during  the  months  while  his  peo- 
ple had  been  engaged  in  a  lif  e-and-death  struggle 
in  their  strike  against  the  Milton  Machinery 
Company  and  John  Sargent,  had  often  seen 
cause  for  deep  worry  in  the  spread  among  them 
of  the  talk  and  reading  of  Socialism.  It  was  not 
that  he  feared  the  direct  effect  of  the  arguments 
of  Socialism  upon  or  against  the  Catholic  faith 
of  his  people.  Certainly  he  did  not  believe  that 
Socialism  as  a  doctrine,  religious  or  unreligious, 
would  ever  greatly  interfere  with  the  faith  of 
those  he  called  his  own  Irish.  He  had  lived  a 
long  time,  and  had  some  very  well-established 
convictions.  One  of  these  was  that  an  Irishman, 
of  however  many  generations  removed  from  Ire- 
land, if  he  ever  loses  his  Catholic  faith  (Father 
Driscoll  had  his  private  doubts  of  this  ever  hap- 
pening), he  loses  it,  not  because  he  has  found 
something  that  suits  him  better — he  simply  loses 
it,  without  ever  expecting  anything  to  take  its 
place. 

Father  Huetter,  educated  in  continental 
Europe,  and  having  charge  of  the  Italians  and 


148        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

Poles,  took  the  matter  differently.  He  argued 
with  his  men  by  the  book,  tooth  and  nail,  night 
and  day,  against  the  propaganda  of  Socialism. 
The  Dean,  loving  the  restless  fire  of  ardor  in  his 
young  assistant,  and  knowing  that  Father  Huet- 
ter  understood  the  habits  of  mind  and  the  former 
environments  of  these  peoples  as  he  himself  could 
never  hope  to  do,  approved  heartily. 

With  his  own,  the  people  whom  he  understood, 
he  rarely  argued.  He  scarcely  ever  mentioned 
Socialism  by  name  in  the  pulpit.  He  did  not 
think  that  the  names  that  things  were  called  by 
or  the  stringing  of  arguments  would  have  any 
real  effect,  one  way  or  the  other,  with  his  kind  of 
people. 

For  Socialism  as  a  distinct  political  entity  he 
saw  no  future  whatever.  He  saw  that  wher- 
ever representative  government  existed  in  the 
world  there  was  but  one  line  of  cleavage.  That 
line  ran — roughly  and  brokenly,  of  course,  but 
always  effectively — between  those  who  wished  to 
go  forward  and  those  who  wished  to  hold  back. 
Liberal  and  conservative,  he  said,  was  the  only 
lasting  division  of  men.  There  was  no  room  in 
any  country  for  more  than  these  two  parties. 
The  party  that  moved  faster  would  sooner  or 
later — sooner,  perhaps,  than  any  one  imagined — 
absorb  whatever  was  popular  and  economically 
sound  in  Socialism.  What  was  left  would  then 
be  negligible. 

He  had  no  concern  about  the  outward  work- 


"GOD  LIVES'3  149 

ings  of  Socialism.  But  he  feared  the  hardening 
false  realism  which,  under  the  name  of  ideals, 
deifies  the  full  stomach.  He  distrusted  the  rea- 
soning which  makes  a  demigod  of  the  man  who 
labors  with  his  hands,  and  which  at  the  same 
time  curses  labor  as  essentially  evil.  He  read 
his  Genesis  differently.  He  did  not  believe  that 
t he  sweat  of  thy  face  was  a  curse. 

He  knew  his  people;  he  lived  intimately  in 
their  ideas  and  aspirations.  He  knew  that  hard 
labor  conditions  were  brutalizing  and  stunting 
to  moral  and  spiritual  growth.  But  a  constant 
preachment  that  never  raised  men's  eyes  higher 
than  their  stomachs,  that  was  brutalizing,  too. 

He  did  not  believe  that  a  hungry  or  an  over- 
worked or  an  underpaid  man  was  more  spiritual 
than  a  well-fed,  physically  contented  one.  The 
gnawing  of  want  is  not  good  for  any  soul.  But 
he  knew  that  the  insistent  demand  for  more  and 
ever  more  was  turning  the  minds  of  men  forever 
upon  the  things  of  the  body,  wherein  their  hap- 
piness could  not  and  must  not  altogether  lie. 

When  he  looked  into  their  faces  now,  however, 
as  they  rose  from  their  knees  and  gently  crowded 
up  more  closely  round  him,  his  fear  was  lifted. 
Hunger  he  saw  in  those  faces,  and  the  results  of 
hunger.  Lines  he  saw  upon  them,  which  months 
of  scanty  feeding  and  haunting  fears  and  wor- 
ries had  scraped  deep.  But  beneath  the  lines 
and  in  the  depths  of  their  eyes  he  saw  shining  the 
light  of  unbounded  confidence  in  God,  the  sure- 


150        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

ness  and  the  strength  of  His  nearness.  They 
had  gone  into  the  far  places  following  the  soul  of 
the  boy  whom  all  had  loved.  They  had  talked 
with  God,  each  in  his  own  way;  and  you  could 
see  that  each  man  had  been  understood. 

The  Dean,  seeing  and  understanding,  scarcely 
dared  open  his  lips.  What  was  there  to  be  said? 
God  lives!  All  else  is  little.  This  they  had  al- 
ready seen,  each  for  himself. 

While  the  great  crowd  had  been  pouring  out 
of  the  church  and  the  still  greater  crowd  that  had 
not  been  able  to  get  into  the  church  was  forming 
itself  into  order  for  the  march  to  the  cemetery, 
the  coffin  had  halted  a  moment  in  the  street.  A 
girl  in  a  quiet  gray  dress  had  crowded,  gently  as 
a  ghost,  into  the  ranks  of  men  about  the  coffin, 
until  she  was  near  enough  to  put  out  a  slim, 
work-hardened,  little  hand  and  pat  the  black  box. 
Then  she  had  slipped  away  unobtrusively  as  she 
had  come.  No  one  had  noticed  her.  She  was 
merely  the  girl  whom  Harry  Loyd  had  loved  and 
who  had  promised  to  be  his  wife.  So  she  had  no 
place  in  the  procession.  Their  engagement  had 
been  their  own  secret,  though  the  kindly  house- 
tops could  have  told  all  there  was  to  know  about 
it. 

They  would  have  been  married  by  now;  but 
the  strike  had  swept  away  all  the  savings  on 
which  they  had  been  going  to  begin  life ;  for  both, 
trusting  to  life  and  health  and  love,  had  given 


"GOD  LIVES"  151 

unstintingly  to  those  who  had  had  no  savings. 

If  John  Sargent  had  really  wished  to  know 
what  Harry  Loyd  had  said  last,  before  he  had 
"stepped  off  into  the  dark,"  he  could  probably 
have  found  out.  The  boy  had  said: 

"We'll  have  to  wait  a  long  time  now,  I  guess, 
Nonie.  But  if  you're  willing,  you're  worth  wait- 
ing for ;  and  old  John  W.  Wait  himself  has  noth- 
ing on  me." 

So  Nonie  Gay  lor  had  no  place  to  walk  in  the 
procession. 

She  stole  away  through  the  crowd,  hiding  her- 
self as  best  she  could. 

The  bell  tolled  out  its  measured  gloom,  and 
there  did  not  seem  to  be  any  place  where  she 
could  hide  away  from  the  sound  of  it.  Then  she 
remembered  a  man  who,  too,  would  wish  to  run 
from  the  sound  of  it,  but  who  could  not  run.  He 
had  to  stay  where  he  was. 

It  was  a  bold  thing  to  do,  bolder  perhaps  than 
to  have  walked  openly  beside  Jane  Loyd  in  the 
funeral.  But  Jim  Loyd  was  the  only  person  in 
the  world  who  would  not  pity  her  to-day.  And 
pity  she  could  not  meet.  Jim  Loyd  would  be 
too  busy  with  his  own  grief  and  fury  to  think  of 
her.  She  would  go  and  see  him. 

Warden  Wheeler,  with  a  lot  of  unspoken 
words  just  back  of  his  lips,  seated  the  girl  in  the 
inner  office  of  the  jail  and  went  to  bring  Loyd. 

She  had  always  been  afraid  of  Jim  Loyd,  the 
big,  impatient  man,  with  the  chained  fires  that 


152        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

danced  in  his  bold,  black  eyes.  She  had  never 
had  more  than  a  short  word  from  him. 

But  when  he  came  now,  alone,  and  she  saw  the 
naked,  seared  misery  of  his  face,  she  knew  that 
she  would  never  again  be  able  to  fear  him.  A 
man  who  could  suffer  like  that  would  never  be 
feared  by  a  woman. 

It  was  not  that  he  was  broken  or  shrunken. 
He  was  as  big  and  grim  and  strong-looking  as 
ever.  But  the  fires  of  his  eyes  had  turned  to 
burn  inward,  as  though  they  raged  upon  his  very 
soul.  And  there  was  no  light  in  the  face,  only 
the  blank  gray  of  ashes  over  a  bed  of  coals. 

When  she  had  looked  once  her  own  revolt  was 
stilled,  and,  as  is  the  way  of  women  ever,  her  own 
sorrow  welled  up  into  a  flood  of  mothering  ten- 
derness. 

Loyd  saw  the  look  leap  into  her  face,  the  look 
of  all  the  mothers  of  earth.  And  he  stood 
ashamed,  so  that  the  color  came  creeping  back 
into  his  face.  This  slender,  motherless  girl  who 
had  lost  all  there  was  for  her  in  the  world,  before 
she  had  even  had  it,  was  still  strong  enough  and 
brave  enough  to  carry  pity  to  him! 

"Why  did  you  come  here,  child?"  he  said  at 
last.  "This  place  is  not  good  for  you  to-day." 

"I  could  not  walk  in  the  street,"  she  returned 
slowly.  "People  would  be  looking  and  pitying. 
There  was  no  place  for  me.  I  could  not  stand  it. 
I  touched  his  coffin  with  my  hand  and  ran  away 


"GOD  LIVES"  153 

— ran  away,"  she  repeated  softly,  as  though  it 
explained  something. 

Loyd  understood  and  his  quick  heart  was 
touched  to  the  depths,  even  as  it  had  not  been 
touched  by  his  own  grief  and  suffering.  Jane 
would  not  have  understood.  It  had  always  been 
difficult  for  Jane  to  understand  that  any  one  but 
herself  could  be  anything  to  Harry.  And  if 
she  had  understood — what  could  she  have  said? 
What  could  any  one  say?  Where  was  there  a 
word  out  of  all  the  words  that  men  have  made 
that  could  be  an  answer  to  the  pitiful  question 
in  this  girl's  eyes?  "Why?"  "Why?"  they 
were  saying.  God  had  the  answer  hidden. 

They  sat  a  while  in  silence,  neither  of  them 
thinking.  There  was  nothing  to  be  thought 
about.  Then  Loyd  suddenly  said: 

"Nonie,  did  you  say  your  prayers?" 

She  looked  up  startled,  as  though  he  had 
broken  in  upon  some  secret.  Then  she  broke 
out: 

"I  didn't!  I  didn't!  I  didn't  say  a  prayer  or 
cry  a  tear  since — since — I  sent  a  prayer  after  him 
down  the  road.  And  the  answer  was  a  shot!" 

"Steady,  steady,  little  girl.  I  haven't  said  a 
prayer  either.  Couldn't  we — couldn't  we  try  it 
now?" 

She  looked  at  him  for  a  long  moment.  Then 
she  buried  her  face  in  her  hands  and  the  great 
relieving  sobs  of  youth  came  crowding  up  into 


154        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

her  throat.  Loyd  had  found  the  best  word  for 
her. 

When  she  had  quieted  a  little,  she  went  fum- 
bling in  the  little  bag  that  hung  from  her  wrist 
and  found  her  beads.  And,  Loyd  supporting 
and  steadying  her,  these  two,  so  far  apart  and 
different  in  everything,  walked  up  and  down  the 
floor  of  that  strange  place,  telling  between  them 
the  Way  from  Gethsemane  to  Calvary. 

So  John  Sargent,  knocking  and  quickly  step- 
ping into  the  room,  found  them. 

Loyd  turned  fiercely.  Out  of  the  few  mo- 
ments of  peace  and  heart's  ease,  the  first  that  he 
had  found  in  many  days,  all  the  brute  ravaging 
forces  of  his  wild  temper  sprang  with  tenfold 
fury.  Was  this  man  to  haunt  him  forever,  to 
follow  him  down  even  into  the  secret  place  of  his 
soul  and  mock  him?  There  he  stood  now. 
Why  not  end  it?  Only  a  table  stood  in  the  way. 

Sargent  sat  down  quietly  at  the  table.  He 
was  not  consciously  doing  the  right  thing,  the 
safe  thing.  He  merely  wanted  to  think. 

These  two  had  undoubtedly  been  saying  their 
prayers.  Now,  just  at  the  moment,  he  could  not 
think  of  any  two  people  who  had  less  reason  to 
pray,  or  who  would  be  less  likely  to  be  found 
praying. 

He  admitted  that  he  did  not  understand  it. 

Nonie  Gaylor  was  the  first  to  speak. 

"Mr,  Sargent,"  she  said,  "why  have  you  come 
here?  You  had  no  right  to  come.  If  you  have 


"GOD  LIVES"  155 

come  to  laugh  at  Mr.  Loyd,  God  will  laugh  at 

you." 

Now  there  it  was  again.  God  had  laughed  at 
her—for  no  apparent  good  reason — had  just 
playfully  flicked  the  untasted  cup  of  life  away 
from  her  lips.  And  yet  she  looked  confidently 
back  up  to  Him,  for  justice.  But  Sargent  did 
not  confide  to  her  any  of  these  reflections. 

"My  girl,"  he  answered,  "if  I  told  you  the 
truth  you  wouldn't  believe  it.  I'm  not  sure  that 
I'd  believe  it  myself.  I  rarely  tell  the  truth — 
it's  so  useless,  and  wasteful. 

"'Sit  down,  Loyd,"  he  said,  turning  in  his  chair. 
"You  can't  lay  a  hand  on  me  while  I'm  sitting 
down.  You  simply  couldn't.  We  both  know 
it." 

Quivering  in  every  limb,  Loyd  sat  down 
weakly.  In  the  face  of  John  Sargent's  balking 
coolness  his  passions  had  burned  themselves  out. 

"No,"  Sargent  continued,  "I  didn't  come  here 
to  jeer.  I  wasn't  in  the  mood  for  it  this  morn- 
ing. As  I  said,  I'm  not  going  to  tell  you  the 
truth  about  why  I  did  come,  for  I'm  not  sure  my- 
self. But,  now  that  I'm  here,  there's  a  proposi- 
tion in  my  mind.  I'm  going  to  show  it  to  you, 
Loyd;  and  if  you  can't  see  reason  in  it,  maybe 
this  girl  here  can." 

Loyd  sat  staring  dully,  his  mind  going  round 
in  a  caged  circle. 

"You  have  heard,"  Sargent  went  on,  squaring 
his  elbows  on  the  table,  "what  the  Governor  and 


156        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

the  State  troops  are  doing  and  expecting  to  do 
here.  The  town  is  under  martial  law  already. 
Before  night  they  will  take  possession  of  my  mill 
and  attempt  to  run  it,  under  martial  law.  They 
can  run  it.  The  men  will  go  back  to  work  to- 
morrow and  the  wheels  will  turn  round — the 
river  will  do  that  much.  But  where  are  they  go- 
ing to  get  money  for  as  much  as  a  single  pay-roll? 
There  is  no  stock  to  be  sold.  And  if  there  were, 
there  is  not  a  bank  in  the  country  that  would  dare 
advance  a  dollar  on  it.  They  have  no  materials. 
The  steel  interests  of  the  country  are  bigger  than 
Governor  Gordon  Fuller  and  all  the  governors 
in  the  nation.  They  wouldn't  sell  him  or  the 
manager  he  sends  here  a  pound  of  steel  if  it 
would  save  his  life. 

"The  men  will  go  back  to  work  at  the  old  con- 
ditions and  worse,  and  when  they  have  marked 
time  for  a  week  and  find  that  there's  no  money 
for  them,  where  will  things  be  then? 

"Now  if  you  will  call  this  strike  off  at  once  I 
will  put  up  my  notices  granting  all  the  demands 
you  made  in  the  beginning,  and  a  five  per  cent, 
increase." 

"You  said  you  did  not  expect  to  be  believed," 
said  Loyd.  "What's  the  truth?" 

"I  did  say  that,  didn't  I?  Well,  it  won't  do 
any  good,  but  I'll  break  my  rule  for  once.  This 
is  the  truth.  This  plan  of  the  Governor's  to  con- 
fiscate my  property  and  make  me  arbitrate  with 
you,  is  going  to  fail.  It's  bound  to  fail  because 


"GOD  LIVES"  157, 

capital  will  hold  together  in  its  own  interest,  and 
the  Governor  will  not  be  able  to  get  the  money  to 
run  it.  Your  old  priest  here  gave  the  Governor 
the  idea,  but,  as  would  happen  with  a  spiritual- 
minded  man,  he  forgot  to  tell  him  where  the 
money  was  to  be  got.  But  the  thing  is  possible. 
If  it  is  given  a  try  now  and  fails  for  lack  of 
money,  some  other  governor,  or  a  president, 
maybe,  will  try  it — and  remember  to  procure  the 
money  beforehand.  Then  it  will  succeed. 

"Once  it  does,  private  property  might  as  well 
not  exist  in  this  country.  There  will  come  a 
seven-year  plague  of  carpetbagging  government 
officials  who,  at  the  first  sign  of  labor  trouble, 
will  camp  on  and  practically  confiscate  every 
man's  plant.  It  will  bring  on  a  reign  of  graft 
and  incompetence  and  mischief  that  will  ruin  the 
country.  When  it  is  over,  labor  will  find  itself 
back  where  it  was  twenty  years  ago,  not  biting 
the  hand  that  feeds  it  as  it  is  to-day — but  beg- 
ging, begging,  I  tell  you,  for  anything  to  do. 

"I  am  right.  And  I'm  telling  you  the  truth. 
Will  you  do  as  I  say?" 

Loyd  shook  his  head  slowly.  He  could  not 
see  through  all  of  the  argument.  But  he  was 
not  trying.  He  was  not  interested  in  it. 

"No,"  he  said.  "Your  proposition  is  no  good 
to  me.  I  had  a  better  one  last  night  and  I  gave 
it  up." 

"What  was  it?" 

"To  go  out  of  here  where  you  have  put  me — 


158        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

the  door  was  open — and  with  the  four  thousand 
men  at  my  command  take  for  our  own  your  mill 
and  your  three  banks  here — that  would  have 
given  us  the  money  you  say  the  Governor  lacks — 
and  your  stores  and  trolley  cars.'* 

"Every  mother's  son  of  you  would  have  been 
shot  down,"  exclaimed  Sargent. 

"I'm  not  so  sure.  The  militia  is  not  so  ready 
to  kill  as  your  guards  are."  Sargent  flushed 
suddenly  and  Nonie  Gaylor  shuddered. 

"We  might  have  lost,"  Loyd  went  on.  "We 
might  have  won.  We  might  have  forced  a  com- 
promise. But  whether  we  lost  or  won  or  what, 
we  would  have  taken  care  to  ruin  you.  That  was 
the  only  part  I  was  really  interested  in.  Then 
the  future  of  labor  or  capital  wouldn't  have  both- 
ered you.  You'd  have  shot  yourself.  The  cow- 
ards of  your  class  always  do  that.  It's  easier 
than  living  on  your  own  merits." 

Sargent  winced  and  pressed  the  tips  of  his 
fingers  down  hard  on  the  table.  It  was  the  echo 
of  a  thought  that  had  sometimes  come  to  him  on 
gloomy,  neurotic  nights.  Some  men  said  it  was 
the  only  proper  way,  when  debts  could  not  be 
paid.  He  himself  had  once  said — speaking  of 
another  man  who  had  failed  ignominiously  and 
dragged  friends  down  with  him — that  the  short- 
est way  out  was  the  best.  But  Loyd's  blunt  way 
of  putting  it  was  too  much.  He  gathered  him- 
self, and  asked: 


"GOD  LIVES"  159 

"Why  didn't  you  go  through  with  this  excel- 
lent plan  of  yours?" 

"A  good  man,  who  loved  me,  stopped  me.  I 
don't  know  whether  I'm  glad  or  not.  Anyway, 
he  stopped  me." 

"The  priest  again,  I  suppose,"  mused  Sargent. 
"It  strikes  me  that  I'm  piling  up  a  high  score 
with  that  old  gentleman." 

"I  saw  him  save  your  life  once,"  said  Loyd. 

"I  remember  that.  And  now  he  has  saved  my 
property.  It  only  remains  for  him  to  save  my 
soul." 

"Don't  jest,  Mr.  Sargent,"  pleaded  Nonie; 
"it's  too  horrible." 

"My  girl,  I'm  a  long  way  from  jesting." 

He  sat  looking  straight  ahead  of  him  for  some 
minutes.  But  he  did  not  give  any  account  of 
what  he  saw.  Finally  he  said: 

"The  man  who  shot  Harry  Loyd  did  it  either 
by  accident  or  in  a  sudden  fright.  Those  men 
had  my  orders  not  to  shoot.  They  were  there 
to  provoke  and  to  be  shot  at. 

"My  class,  as  you  call  it  in  your  Socialist 
lingo,  has  always  to  use  the  law.  Why  should  it 
not?  It  pays  for  law  and  makes  government 
possible. 

"Now  comes  this  young  Governor,  turning  up- 
side down  the  Constitution  of  the  State.  In  the 
end  it  will  debauch  and  demoralize  government. 
It  will  hurt  my  class.  But  it  will  bring  years  of 


160        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

suffering  and  misery  upon  yours.  You  can 
reach  out  and  stop  it.  Will  you  do  it?" 

"No.  The  Governor's  plan  can  have  its  trial. 
I  don't  believe  much  in  it,  for  I  know  what  you 
can  do  with  money.  But,  Mr.  Sargent,  believe 
me,  you'd  better  help  him  with  both  hands.  For 
when  his  plan  fails,  it  will  be  time  to  try  mine."' 

"Miss  Gaylor,"  said  Sargent,  turning,  "can't 
you  tell  this  man  that  he  is  crazy;  that  all  he 
really  wants  is  his  own  headlong  way  to  ruin  us 
all!"* 

"I  do  not  understand  anything  about  it,  Mr. 
Sargent,"  Nonie  answered  in  a  dead,  leaden 
voice.  "It  is  all  talk  to  me.  I  do  not  under- 
stand it,  I  suppose,  because  I  am  ignorant.  I 
went  into  your  mill  when  I  was  just  past  thir- 
teen. I  have  been  there  running  winders  for 
you  ever  since.  It's  only  seven  years,  but  it 
might  as  well  be  seven  thousand. 

"Two  years  ago  they  put  me  in  charge  of  that 
room.  In  that  time  they  say  that  I  have  nearly 
doubled  the  earning  capacity  of  that  room.  I 
do  not  know  what  that  means.  It  never  meant 
anything  to  me.  I  suppose  it  means  that  I  know 
how  to  make  other  girls  waste  less  and  work 
harder  and  faster  than  any  one  could  ever  make 
them  do  before.  I  don't  know  why  I  did  it.  I 
don't  want  to  see  them  work  any  faster  or  harder 
than  they  have  to.  But  I  go  on  pushing  them 
always.  I  don't  do  it  for  you.  I  wouldn't  care 
if  you  were  losing  money. 


"GOD  LIVES"  161 

"And  I  suppose  I'll  go  right  on.  I  don't 
know  why.  For  the  right  to  live?  I  never 
much  cared  to  live,  except  for  Harry  Loyd. 
Now — I  suppose  I'll  go  on  just  the  same. 

"No.  I  don't  think  the  women  who  work  in 
your  mill  care  much,  or  that  they're  much  afraid 
of  Socialism  or  any  other  change  that  could 
come.  They  don't  know  what  it  would  mean. 
And  they  can't  think  that  it  would  be  any  worse. 
We  go  on,  I  think,  because,  somehow,  we  keep 
on  believing  that  God  is  still  alive.  I  don't  know 
any  more  than  that." 

Then  John  Sargent  got  up  and  went  away. 

Out  in  the  street,  he  reflected:  "Now  it 
would  be  interesting  to  know  what  those  two 
people  were  praying  for.  He  wouldn't  ask  for 
anything.  And  she  doesn't  hope  for  anything. 
Yet — yet — I  don't  know.  I  don't  understand." 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE  REV.  DOCTOR  HILLIARD 

4  '\\  7HY,  Dean,  the  delusion  is  as  old  as  the 
*  *  race  of  men.  Ever  since  one  man  began 
to  work  for  another,  government,  in  some  form, 
has  been  trying  to  come  between  them  to  keep 
one  from  gouging  the  other.  It  has  never  suc- 
ceeded, and  it  never  will;  because  the  price  of 
labor  is  simply  the  wages  for  which  a  man  is 
obliged  to  work.  If  he  did  not  have  to  work  he 
would  not  work  at  all,  at  any  price.  If  the  em- 
ployer could  get  help  for  nothing  he  would  not 
give  any  wages.  There  is  only  one  question,  and 
it  is  its  own  answer — How  acutely  does  one  need 
what  the  other  has? 

"Even  Moses  when  he  struck  the  rock  did  not 
expect  the  water  to  run  uphill." 

The  Rev.  Doctor  Hilliard  was  a  teacher  of 
Sociology  and  Economics  in  the  University. 
He  had  been  up  in  the  hill  country  gathering 
data  on  the  subject  of  abandoned  farms,  which 
he  proposed  to  use  in  a  book  dealing  with  the 
causes  and  effects  of  the  movement  of  our  people 
toward  the  cities.  He  had  stopped  over  the 

night  with  Dean  Driscoll  and  Father  Huetter 

102 


THE  REV.  DOCTOR  BILLIARD    163 

in  Milton,  and  he  was  much  interested  in  the  ex- 
periment which  the  Governor  and  the  State 
forces  had  inaugurated  in  the  strike  situation 
there. 

To  him,  the  action  of  the  Governor  in  taking 
charge  of  the  Milton  Machinery  Company's 
plant  and  putting  the  men  back  to  work  under 
martial  law  was  heresy,  rank,  headless,  baseless. 
It  broke  the  first  canon  of  economic  law,  the  law 
of  supply  and  demand. 

The  habit  of  the  lecture-room  never  quite  fell 
from  the  Doctor's  shoulders,  and  now,  launched 
into  a  subject  on  which  he  could  give  chapter  and 
verse,  he  was  cathedral  in  his  pronouncements. 

The  Dean  appeared  to  be  only  mildly  inter- 
ested. He  himself  had  asked  the  Governor  to 
take  the  steps  that  had  been  taken,  because  he 
believed  it  to  be  the  only  way  to  save  his  people 
from  starvation  and  crime.  He  had  a  deep 
reverence  for  the  glories  of  the  University;  but 
where  his  people  were  concerned  he  would  have 
traded  the  intellectual  approval  of  the  entire  fac- 
ulty for  a  few  carloads  of  potatoes. 

Father  Huetter,  however,  was  bursting  with 
indignant  argumentation  in  defense  of  the  Dean. 
But  the  Doctor  was  not  to  be  waylaid. 

"It  is  the  same  foolish  old  attempt,"  he  orated, 
"that  has  been  made  everywhere,  to  rule  eco- 
nomic forces  by  politics  and  sentiment.  It  can- 
not be  done  and  everybody  knows  that  it  cannot; 
but  government  goes  right  on  trying  it. 


164        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

Wherever  there  is  trouble  the  cry  rises  that  gov- 
ernment must  do  something.  Government  knows 
that  it  can  do  nothing,  but  it  has  to  make  some 
show  of  busying  itself.  Government  can  no 
more  divide  the  tides  of  want  and  plenty  than  it 
can  level  the  tides  of  the  sea.  Both  tides  follow 
fixed  laws.  Depression  and  scarcity  follow 
overproduction  and  waste,  as  surely  as  ebb  fol- 
lows flow." 

"And  has  your  Economics,"  broke  in  Father 
Huetter,  "taken  all  this  time  to  find  out  only 
that?  Has  it  no  preventive,  or  not  even  a 
remedy  to  offer?" 

"There  is  no  remedy,"  returned  the  Doctor 
didactically,  "and  certainly  no  preventive,  for 
inherent  conditions.  Production- — business,  you 
call  it — has  long  periods  of  work  when  it  is  fever- 
ishly turning  out  more  than  the  world  really 
needs.  Capital  and  Labor  then  need  each  other. 
Capital,  during  this  time,  is  prudent.  It  piles 
up  resources  which  it  knows  it  will  need  in  the 
time  when  markets  become  over-fed.  Labor, 
during  the  good  time,  is  confident,  fatuous.  It 
takes  no  heed.  It  accumulates  nothing.  When 
the  period  of  depression  comes,  Labor  suffers. 
It  is  inevitable." 

"But,"  said  Father  Huetter,  "it  is  hardly  pos- 
sible for  the  laborer  to  accumulate  anything,  even 
at  the  best.  His  family  grows  up  about  him. 
He  is  bound  to  give  them  the  best  he  can  at  all 
times." 


THE  REV.  DOCTOR  HILLIARD    165 

"There  is  just  where  the  social  fallacies  of  the 
country  come  in  to  disturb  the  economic  balance. 
Who  is  to  say  what  is  the  best  for  the  family  of 
a  workingman,  and  that  his  family  must  have 
that  best  always  at  the  cost  of  everything  that 
he  can  earn?  Two  families  live  side  by  side  in 
neighboring  houses.  Their  supporters  work 
side  by  side  at  the  same  machines.  Each  family 
knows  to  a  penny  what  the  other  receives.  Yet 
each  family  spends  its  life  trying  to  deceive  the 
other  and  to  impress  the  other  with  the  idea  that 
it  can  spend  more  than  the  other.  They  pay  for 
this  by  suffering,  when  the  demand  for  labor 
ceases." 

"But  Labor  does  not  receive  its  due  share  of 
the  profits  of  prosperity." 

"Would  it  make  any  real  difference  if  Labor 
were  to  receive  fifty  per  cent.,  a  hundred  per 
cent.,  more  of  the  profits  than  it  does?  Would 
not  the  race  of  family  and  social  competition  still 
go  on?  When  a  man  ceases  to  earn,  does  it 
make  any  difference  whether  he  has  been  receiv- 
ing, and  spending,  five  thousand  a  year  or  five 
hundred?  I  think  not. 

"Your  Socialist  harks  back  to  the  time  when 
there  were  no  machines,  no  concentration  of  La- 
bor in  factories,  when  every  man  had  his  own  bit 
of  land  or  his  own  tools  to  work  with.  Was  not 
the  summer's  fecundity  followed  by  the  winter's 
blast,  then  as  now? 

"Did  not  the  time  come,  then  as  now,  when 


166        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

the  workman  found  no  more  demand  for  the 
work  of  his  tools  ?  It  did.  But,  in  that  day,  the 
man  was  more  provident.  He  had  the  sense  of 
individual  responsibility.  He  realized  that  the 
winter,  the  time  of  unproductiveness,  was  com- 
ing, and  that  it  was  his  business  to  look  forward 
to  that  time. 

"To-day  he  is  willing  to  shift  that  responsi- 
bility from  himself  to  the  shoulders  of  organized 
industry.  He  forgets  that  he  is  an  individual,  a 
head  of  family,  a  provider ;  and  he  goes  on  heed- 
lessly living,  hand  to  mouth,  on  what  the  machine 
daily  grinds  out  for  him. 

"When  Capital  sees  the  dull  time  coming,  it 
begins  to  retrench,  to  cut  down  things  here  and 
there.  Labor,  seeing  nothing  in  this  but  injus- 
tice and  greed,  decides  to  strike — to  teach  Capi- 
tal a  lesson.  Labor  is  doing  just  what  Capital 
expected  and  wished  it  to  do.  Capital  had  al- 
ready decided  to  stop  work  for  a  while. 

"Then  Labor,  unready  and  beginning  to  suf- 
fer, cries  out  against  the  oppressor.  Govern- 
ment— the  fetish  of  the  improvident  and  the 
thoughtless — government  must  do  something! 

"But  what?  Can  government  wave  a  hand 
and  create  a  demand  for  goods  with  which 
the  markets  of  the  country  are  already  over- 
supplied?  Government  is  not  a  magician.  It 
is,  at  best,  only  a  sleepy-eyed  policeman.  It  is 
absolutely  powerless  in  the  face  of  economic  laws, 
in  the  making  of  which  it  had  no  hand." 


THE  EEV.  DOCTOR  HILLIARD    167 

"It  is  all  clear — very  clear,"  said  Father 
Huetter.  "But  the  people  were  starving." 

"Oh,  not  that,"  the  Doctor  assured  them 
largely,  "it  never  comes  to  that.  There  is  always 
relief.  Your  city  authorities,  your  county  au- 
thorities— no  one  really  has  to  be  hungry  in  this 
country." 

"Authorities?"  Father  Huetter  fairly 
snapped  at  the  word.  "Do  you  realize,  Doctor, 
that  every  official  of  this  town  is  a  creation  of 
the  Milton  Machinery  Company,  of  John  Sar- 
gent; and  it  is  the  same  in  Mohawk  County? 
Do  you  think  that  our  men  or  women  could  take 
begrudged  charity  relief  from  them?  If  you 
know  anything  of  the  character  of  our  people, 
you  know  that  they  would  starve  first." 

"But,  why?  Why  should  these  things  be  so? 
Do  not  your  people  elect  their  own  officials? 
The  machinery  of  election  is  always  in  the  hands 
of  the  majority.  They  are  the  majority.  No 
one  can  interfere  with  them  in*  their  sacred  right 
of  suffrage!" 

"Live  in  a  one-mill  town,  and  say  that!"  said 
Father  Huetter  shortly.  "We  are  getting  away 
from  the  point.  The  people  were  in  want,  acute 
want.  I  know  families  whose  tables  have  not 
seen  a  piece  of  meat  for  over  two  months. 
Would  it  interest  them  if  you  told  them  that  they 
had  been  breaking  economic  laws  by  not  saving 
during  the  good  times  of  the  last  two  or  three 
years?  Do  you  think  that  they  have  not  per- 


168        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

haps  guessed  something  like  that  for  them- 
selves ? 

"Last  night  I  was  called  to  a  boy  twelve  years 
old.  He  had  been  thrown  off  a  moving  train  of 
coal-cars.  He  had  jumped  the  train  up  near 
the  cross-over  of  the  O.  &  W.  He  had  a  small 
bag  which  he  was  going  to  fill  with  coal  and 
throw  off  as  the  train  passed  near  his  house.  He 
had  the  bag  nearly  filled  when  a  brakeman  came 
along  over  the  cars.  He  threw  the  bag  off  be- 
fore the  man  reached  him,  and,  in  the  scuffle,  the 
boy  either  fell  or  was  thrown  off  on  his  head. 
They  thought  his  neck  was  broken. 

"As  soon  as  he  was  revived,  he  whispered  to 
his  smaller  brother,  telling  him  where  the  coal 
was  and  that  he  should  go  and  fetch  it  home. 
When  the  little  fellow  went  to  look,  the  coal  was 
gone.  You  see,  somebody  else  needed  the  coal 
too.  The  neighbors  brought  in  wood  enough  for 
the  boy's  mother  to  heat  water  for  the  doctor. 
And  the  cold  weather  has  not  yet  come,"  he 
added  gloomily. 

These  lawless  details,  however,  had  no  place 
in  the  Reverend  Doctor's  large  view  of  things. 
They  were  the  necessary  accompaniments  of 
economic  misunderstanding  everywhere.  They 
proved  nothing  but  what  he  had  been  saying,  that 
laboring  people  working  in  large  communities 
were  become  improvident;  that  they  could  not, 
of  course,  be  prepared  for  a  long  period  of  idle- 
ness. During  the  long,  busy  times  they  forgot; 


THE  EEV.  DOCTOR  HILLIARD    169 

they  would  not  make  the  sacrifices  necessary  to 
gather  a  surplus  which  would  tide  them  over  the 
coming  period  of  reaction.  They  could  not  be 
made  to  believe  that  the  time  of  scarcity  would 
inevitably  come.  They  were  the  victims  of  their 
own  irresponsibility,  their  false  sense  of  security. 

"There  is  something,  however,"  the  Doctor 
went  on,  stepping  lightly  over  Father  Huetter's 
irrelevance,  "something  that  even  our  govern- 
ment, unwieldly  and  irresponsive  as  it  is,  might 
do.  It  has  been  done  by  Germany,  with  marked 
success.  And  England  has  done  it.  Those 
governments  have,  to  be  sure,  an  unhampered 
central  executive  power  which  ours  does  not  pos- 
sess. Still,  a  great  deal  might  be  done  here. 

"It  is  this.  The  country  is  very  large.  One 
section  of  it  scarcely  knows  what  another  section 
is  doing.  There  is  always  an  enormous  waste  of 
Capital  and  of  Labor,  resulting  from  the  fact 
that  in  many  parts  of  the  country  employers  are 
calling  for  help  and  cannot  get  it,  whilst  in  other 
places  men  are  idle.  Government  should  know 
this;  it  should  regulate  it.  There  should  be  a 
real  bureau  of  employment  which  would  see  to 
the  distribution  of  laboring  men  throughout  the 
country  to  the  places  where  they  are  needed. 
They  should  be  moved  freely  to  wherever  there  is 
a  market  for  them." 

"But,  my  dear  Doctor,"  said  the  Dean,  turn- 
ing at  last,  "my  people  are  not  Gypsies.  They 
live  here.  They  have  their  right  to  live  here. 


170        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

They  have  their  families  and  their  little  homes 
here.  They  have  put  down  their  roots  here.  Is 
civilization  such  a  failure  that  they  must  rove 
from  hunting-ground  to  hunting-ground,  from 
pasture  to  pasture?  Might^they  not  as  well  go 
back  at  once,  then,  to  tribal  life?" 

"The  same  economic  conditions  and  the  same 
economic  laws  exist  now  as  did  then.  All  must 
bow  to  them,"  said  the  Doctor  positively. 

"That  answer  would  do  very  well,"  returned 
the  Dean,  "were  it  not  for  three  things:  first,  the 
same  economic  conditions  do  not  exist;  second, 
the  same  economic  laws  are  not  in  force;  third, 
nobody  will  bow  to  them." 

This  was  too  point-blank  for  the  Doctor.  It 
was  discouraging.  He  would  have  to  go  all  over 
the  ground  again.  But  he  was  a  patient  man 
and  just.  The  Dean  was  old;  his  mind  was  af- 
fected by  the  nearness  of  his  people's  trouble; 
and,  above  all,  he  had  not  read  the  proper  au- 
thorities. He  must  be  taught  as  a  beginner. 

"Surely,  Dean,"  the  Doctor  began,  on  the 
firmest  ground,  "you  are  ready  to  admit  that  the 
prosperity  of  your  town  and  its  people  and  the 
good  of  the  whole  valley  depend  upon  the  mill 
here  being  allowed  to  develop  itself  in  the  best 
way,  up  to  its  fullest  capacity." 

"Yes,"  agreed  the  Dean. 

"And  only  the  mill-owner  can  do  that — " 

"Who  is  the  mill-owner?"  the  Dean  queried. 

"Why,  the  company,  the  corporation,  I  sup- 


THE  EEV.  DOCTOR  HILLIARD    171 

pose,  headed  by  Mr.  Sargent.  Is  that  not 
right?" 

"I  do  not  know,"  said  the  old  priest,  measur- 
ing a  long  forearm  carefully  along  the  edge  of 
his  desk.  "I  do  not  know,  I  have  never  been 
able  to  settle  it  in  my  mind.  I  am  going  to  lay 
the  question  before  you,  for  an  expert  opinion." 

The  old  priest  sat  back  marshaling  the  points 
of  the  case  into  order. 

"Thirty-seven  years  ago  last  spring,"  he  be- 
gan, "Milton  Sargent,  John  Sargent's  father, 
was  down  there  by  the  river  at  a  little  forge,  ham- 
mering out  a  plow  by  hand.  He  was  a  bright, 
clever  workman,  but  a  lazy  man  by  nature.  One 
warm  day  an  idea  came  to  him.  It  would  be 
far  easier  to  have  a  dam  built  in  the  river  and  a 
wheel  put  in  that  would  drive  his  hammer  and 
blow  his  bellows. 

"He  went  to  the  small  farmers  about  here  and 
talked  to  them.  Michael  Gallagher,  the  great- 
grandfather of  the  boy  that  Father  Huetter  told 
you  about  a  minute  ago,  lent  him  the  first  hun- 
dred dollars  that  he,  Sargent,  ever  saw.  I  tell 
you  he  could  talk  money  out  of  a  feather  tick. 
Everybody  lent  him  money. 

"He  came  to  me.  I  called  my  trustees.  We 
had  a  little  money  that  we  had  gathered  to  start 
a  church  some  time.  We  would  not  be  ready 
to  use  the  money  for  three  or  four  years,  maybe. 
We  could  see  that  Sargent's  mill  was  bound  to 
make  money,  plenty  of  it.  The  woods  were  be- 


172        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

ing  cut  down  broadcast.  The  farmers  were 
pushing  up  into  the  hill  lands,  and  there  was 
already  a  heavy  demand  for  farming  machinery. 
We  could  not  lose.  We  would  get  our  money 
back,  and  double,  before  we  should  ever  need  it. 

"I  was  a  young  man  in  that  day.  Naturally, 
I  knew  a  great  deal  more  of  the  world  than  I 
do  now.  We  turned  in  to  Sargent  all  the  money 
we  had,  three  hundred  dollars.  Every  one  who 
had  money  did  the  same.  He  got  the  water 
rights  from  the  State  and  the  two  townships 
here  for  little  or  nothing.  The  farmers  and 
woodsmen  turned  in  and  hauled  logs  and  rock 
for  the  dam  and  the  mill. 

"Just  as  the  mill  was  finished  and  the  ma- 
chinery on  the  way  here,  Milton  Sargent  failed. 
The  blow  struck  heavy,  for  the  dollars  came 
grudgingly  out  of  the  hillsides  in  those  days. 
But  the  country  was  new  and  the  people  were 
young.  They  did  not  mourn  long.  In  their 
first  anger  they  chased  Milton  Sargent  out  of 
the  countryside.  Then  they  turned  back  to  look 
at  the  mill,  standing  gaping  there,  and  at  the 
water  running  idly  over  the  dam.  All  they  said 
was  'Sargent's  Folly,'  and  they  went  back  to 
their  work. 

"The  property — dam,  water  rights,  and  all — 
was  put  up  for  sale  by  the  sheriff.  Milton  Sar- 
gent's sister  brought  it  for  a  trifle  of  the  money 
that  had  been  put  up,  at  a  fixed  sale.  The  firms 
that  had  furnished  the  machinery  got  the  money, 


THE  EEV.  DOCTOR  HILLIARD    173 

for  theirs  were  the  only  claims  that  were  prop- 
erly secured.  As  I  said,  we  were  young  in  that 
day. 

"My  poor  old  father  came  up  here  about  that 
time,  to  look  me  over.  He  found  what  I  had 
done  with  the  church  fund.  He  turned  straight 
round,  went  back  to  Albany,  and  got  three  hun- 
dred dollars.  Dear  knows  where.  He  was  back 
in  five  days  and  put  the  money  in  my  hand,  with 
a  look  in  his  eye  that  I  have  never  forgotten. 
I  believe  it  was  the  lasting  sorrow  of  that  honest 
man's  life  that  he  could  not,  out  of  respect  for  the 
clergy,  flog  me  as  I  deserved.  God  rest  him! 
I  hope  I  got  the  lesson,  anyhow. 

"To  get  back — Milton  Sargent  appeared 
quietly  in  the  mill  that  belonged,  nominally,  to 
his  sister.  He  started  the  machinery  and  set 
men  to  work,  the  very  men  whose  money  had 
paid  for  the  machines.  To-day  the  physical 
valuation  of  the  property,  on  the  assessor's  rolls, 
is  one  million,  three  hundred  thousand  dollars. 
It  could  not  be  bought  for  four  times  that  sum. 

"I  hope  I  don't  tire  you?" 

Father  Huetter,  who  had  never  heard  the 
whole  of  this  history,  begged  for  more.  But 
Doctor  Hilliard  maintained  a  judicial  patience. 
Already  he  could  scent  the  heresy  to  which  the 
Dean  was  working,  but  he  merely  nodded  to  him 
to  go  on. 

"My  difficulty  has  always  been  this,"  the  Dean 
summed  up.  "On  that  May  morning  when  Mil- 


174        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

ton  Sargent  got  his  idea,  he  did  not  have  ten  dol- 
lars to  his  name.  From  that  day  to  the  day  he 
died  he  never  did  a  tap  of  work  that  would  pro- 
duce a  cent.  His  sister  had  no  money  to  put  in. 
No  one  of  the  Sargent  name  ever  put  a  thing  into 
that  property  except  nerve  and  the  knowledge 
of  how  to  use  other  people's  money  and  work  and 
brains.  In  common  justice,  then,  who  is  the 
owner  of  that  mill?  I  do  not  know.  Do  you?" 

"The  system  of  civilization  under  which  we 
live,"  the  Doctor  pronounced,  "judges  that  it  be- 
longs to  John  Sargent.  If  others,  under  that 
system,  lost  their  rights,  through  their  own  gross 
carelessness,  who  is  to  be  blamed?  The  system? 

"If  the  system  is  wrong,  it  should  be  changed. 
But  so  long  as  it  is  the  law  of  the  land  it  must  be 
held  sacred." 

"I  had  that  answer,"  said  the  Dean,  "from  an 
old  justice  of  the  peace,  thirty-seven  years  ago. 
I  thought  maybe  something  might  have  been 
learned  since." 

"I  see  what  you  mean,  Dean,"  the  Doctor  ad- 
mitted patiently.  "You  are  trying  to  say  that  be- 
cause the  Sargents  have  used  the  people  to  build 
up  their  great  plant  here,  therefore  the  plant 
should  belong  to  the  people.  Every  Socialist, 
from  Karl  Marx  down  to  Allan  Benson,  could 
quote  you  miles  of  figures  and  statistics  of  un- 
earned profits  to  prove  the  same  thing.  But  it 
is  not  sound.  The  facts,  the  law,  and  even  the 
equity,  are  all  on  the  other  side. 


THE  REV.  DOCTOR  BILLIARD    175 

"As  for  the  facts.  Where  would  Milton  be 
to-day,  if  the  elder  Sargent  had  not  had  the 
brains  and  the  shrewdness  to  develop  it?  It  was 
Jangen's  Ford  then,  and  it  would  be  Jangen's 
Ford  to-day,  or  worse.  Where  would  be  your 
fine  little  city  and  your  schools  and  your  grand 
churches?  Your  great  water-power  would,  per- 
haps, be  running  a  one-horse  grist-mill  employ- 
ing two  men  and  a  boy. 

"The  law.     You  know  how  that  is. 

"The  equity.  You  say  that  your  people  have 
given  the  S argents  a  fortune.  That  is  true. 
But  has  not  that  fortune,  except  the  very  small 
percentage  which  the  S  argents  have  spent,  come 
right  back  into  the  mill  here.  For  what?  Has 
it  not  come  back  to  give  more  and  more  people 
a  better  living  than  they  would  have  had  other- 
wise ?  Do  not  your  own  native  people  here  have 
a  better  life,  a  more  social  one,  "with  more  advan- 
tages, than  they  could  ever  work  out  for  them- 
selves on  the  farms  ?  The  fact  that  they  will  not 
stay  on  the  farms  proves  it.  And  is  it  not  a 
blessing  and  a  godsend  for  the  people  whom 
Father  Huetter  attends  to  be  able  to  come  here 
and  find  abundant  work  for  their  hands,  at  wages 
they  never  dreamed  of  at  home.  Who  made, 
and  who  still  makes,  all  this  possible?  The  Sar- 
gent money." 

"Yes,"  Father  Huetter  said  bitingly.  "It  is 
a  noble  blessing.  Last  year  I  signed  age  cer- 
tificates for  more  than  a  hundred  little  girls,  in 


176        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

order  that  they  might  go  to  work  for  John  Sar- 
ent  the  moment  they  were  fourteen.  The  State 
compels  them  to  go  to  school  twenty  weeks  of  the 
year.  They  can  work  the  other  thirty-two. 
And  I  signed  as  many  more  for  girls  of  sixteen, 
so  that  they  could  work  all  the  year.  Father 
Driscoll  signed  as  many  for  your  Irish- American 
girls. 

"Now  if  those  little  girls  were  growing  up  in 
Ireland  or  in  Italy  or  in  Poland  or  Hungary, 
they  would  have  to  work  some,  too.  But  the 
conditions  would  be  as  different  as  day  from 
night.  Over  there,  they  would  be  working  with 
their  own,  helping  their  fathers  and  their  broth- 
ers. They  would  be  out  in  the  fields ;  they  would 
be  out  in  God's  air  and  sunshine,  filling  out  their 
frames  and  strengthening  their  lungs.  The  sun 
and  the  wind  would  be  driving  up  into  their 
cheeks  the  strong  pulses  of  peasant  blood,  the 
life  of  the  race. 

"Here,  you  can  see  them  hurrying,  shivering 
and  half -nourished,  through  the  dark  of  an  early 
morning  drizzle,  to  shut  themselves  into  John 
Sargent's  mill.  There  they  stand  all  day  long 
at  machines,  their  nerves  forever  on  a  rack;  for 
a  false  move,  a  careless  dropping  of  a  hand,  a 
loose  strand  of  hair,  may  drag  them  into  one  of 
those  machines,  to  death  or  mutilation.  They 
stand  all  day,  in  damp  clothes,  gasping  steam 
and  twine  dust,  and  coughing  away  their  weak- 


THE  REF.  DOCTOR  HILLIARD    177 

ened  lungs.  Yes.  Theirs  is  a  glorious  heritage 
of  freedom!  And  who  will  pay? 

"This  purse-proud,  flamboyant  young  nation 
— boasting  of  how  much  it  can  afford  to  waste, 
and  still  beat  the  world — it  will  pay !  It  will  pay 
in  the  weakness  and  the  degeneracy  of  untold 
generations  to  come. 

"Did  you  ever,  Doctor,  in  all  your  readings  of 
Sociology,  in  civilization  or  in  savagery,  come 
across  a  time  and  place  where  the  young  females 
of  the  race  were  herded  out  to  destruction  in  this 
way?  Why,  there  was  never  a  tribe  so  savage 
or  so  besotted  as  not  to  know  that,  if  it  would 
live,  it  must  above  all  other  things  guard  the 
health  and  vitality  of  its  girls. 

"And  do  you  think  that  the  fathers  and  moth- 
ers here  do  not  know  this  same  thing?  They  do. 
But  the  grind  of  living,  the  race  for  mere  exist- 
ence is  so  close  that  the  young  ones  have  to  be 
driven  out  to  help." 

"But,"  objected  the  Doctor,  "there  is  no  real 
need  for  all  this.  In  the  majority  of  cases  the 
children — if  there  were  real  economy  in  the 
homes1 — would  not  have  to  go  out.  Most  often 
it  is  the  children  themselves  who  want  more  than 
their  parents  can  give,  and  they  insist  on  going 
out  to  work.  The  girls  want  to  dress  and  the 
boys  want  money  to  spend  for  themselves.  It  is 
the  same  race,  the  competition  with  each  other, 
to  outshine  each  other,  that  drives  them  so  hard." 


178        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"Some  of  that  might  be  true  with  the  boys," 
Father  Huetter  admitted.  "They  are  some- 
times willing  to  get  out  of  school.  But  it  is  not 
so  with  the  girls.  They  do  not  want  to  leave 
school.  They  want  the  dresses,  yes.  But  they 
know  what  they  are  doing  when  they  have  to 
leave  school.  Never  imagine  that  they  don't. 
They  know,  the  old-eyed  little  women,  wise  be- 
fore their  time;  they  know  that  when  they  have 
to  leave  before  high  school,  they  are  giving  up  a 
girl's  best  part  of  the  race  in  life — education,  re- 
finement, social  acquaintance.  They  know  what 
they  are  doing,  when  they  give  it  all  up  and 
drop  into  the  blunting,  stupefying  round  of 
John  Sargent's  treadmill.  But  the  reason  is  a 
stronger  one  than  dress. 

"These  little  girls  have  been  hampered  and 
held  back  in  their  school  work  by  other  babies 
clamoring  up  behind  them.  They  have  to  give 
their  time  and  their  little  strength,  which  they 
should  have  had  for  study,  to  these  others. 
And,  just  as  soon  as  the  law  lets  them,  they  have 
to  drop  the  babies  and  hurry  out  to  earn  for 
them. 

"There  is  more  than  that.  Many  a  little  girl 
has  to  leave  school  and  give  up  her  own  pitiful 
chance  in  life  because  there  is  another  baby  com- 
ing into  the  family.  An  unborn  mouth  is  cry- 
ing. Would  it  surprise  you  if — before  she  is 
working  in  the  mill  very  long — that  little  girl 


THE  REV.  DOCTOR  MILLIARD    179 

should  begin  to  question  just  why  that  particular 
baby  had  to  be  born? 

"That  question  is  to-day  the  hardest  of  all  the 
hard  ones  that  the  confessor  has  to  answer. 
And,  under  the  force  of  example  around,  and  the 
force  of  this  terrible  battle  of  the  poor  for  life, 
it  is  every  day  getting  harder  and  harder  to  an- 
swer." 

"But  you  are  getting  away  from- — " 

"I  am  not."  Father  Huetter,  apparently, 
had  not  yet  begun  to  fight.  "I  am  getting  away 
from  nothing.  I  am  getting  to  the  vital,  underly- 
ing things,  the  real  things,  the  things  that  make 
this  struggle  of  ours  a  terrible  one — one  that 
threatens  State  and  nation,  that  threatens  the 
lives  of  rich  and  poor,  and  one  that  threatens  the 
Church  of  Christ! 

"You  say  the  poor  should  be  willing  to  live 
more  economically,  and  save  when  they  are  earn- 
ing. Does  that  touch  the  question?  They  do 
not  save.  They  cannot  save.  And  who  shall 
tell  them  that  they  must  save?  Who  shall  for- 
bid them  to  snatch  what  little  they  can  out  of 
life  as  it  rushes  by  them?  To-morrow  John  Sar- 
gent's mill  may  kill  them.  You  students  and 
lawgivers  announce  your  verdict,  place  the 
blame,  and  go  back  to  your  books.  Have  you 
changed  anything? 

"The  Dean  appeals  to  the  Governor:  'My 
people  are  starving  and  desperate.  If  you  do 


180        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

not  give  them  work  and  food  they  will  kill  and  be 
killed.  Put  them  to  work  somehow,  what  mat- 
ters how?  Tide  them  over  this  crisis  and  they 
will  get  on,  until  the  next  crisis.'  He  is  right. 
He  does  the  thing  of  the  hour — to  save  the  life 
and  prevent  the  suffering  of  the  hour." 

"It  is  a  makeshift,"  urged  the  Doctor;  "an  ex- 
periment, foredoomed  to  futility." 

"You  are  academic,"  Father  Huetter  swept 
on;  "he  is  expedient.  Neither  comes  near  the 
root  of  the  trouble. 

"He,  because  Milton  has  been  his  life  and  his 
work,  does  not  look  farther  than  this  town  and 
this  one  struggle.  You,  because  there  is  a  strike, 
and  because  it  is  only  at  the  time  of  strikes  that 
you  hear  the  noise  of  the  grinding  of  human 
lives,  you  think  that  these  are  the  only  times 
when  people  suffer. 

"I  tell  you  this  struggle  is  going  on  forever, 
day  and  night,  in  every  mill  town  of  this  whole 
country.  In  a  town  like  this,  where  one  man 
owns  or  controls  every  money-making  thing  in 
it,  the  struggle  becomes  bitter,  personal,  mur- 
derous. 

"And  everywhere,  where  a  man  pushes  tired 
legs  under  a  scanty  table,  where  men  talk  to- 
gether, and  even  where  women  haggle  over  the 
price  of  chuck  and  soup-bones,  an  idea  is  work- 
ing. 

"Did  you  read  the  last  report  of  the  United 


THE  REV,  DOCTOR  HILLIARD    181 

States  Commissioner  of  Commerce  and  Labor?" 

"I  did,"  said  the  Doctor. 

"What  percentage,  according  to  that  report, 
of  the  earnings  of  industry  comes  back  to  the 
laborer  in  the  form  of  wages?" 

"Seventeen  to  twenty-one  per  cent.,"  the  Doc- 
tor quoted. 

"Averaging  less  than  one-fifth,  then,"  said 
Father  Huetter.  "And  what  part  does  the  la- 
bor element  contribute  in  actual  production? 
Just  what  does  the  work  of  the  men  employed 
amount  to?" 

"Well,  it  varies  in  the  different  industries." 
Doctor  Hilliard  considered.  "It  rarely  goes  be- 
low fifty  per  cent.,  and  in  some  industries  goes  as 
high  as  sixty-five." 

"Very  good.  The  rest  is  credited  to  interest 
on  investment;  to  a  high  salary  to  the  owner,  as 
manager;  to  power  and  light,  and  so  on;  to  sell- 
ing and  distributing  expenses;  to  such  inciden- 
tal charges  as  legislation  and  campaign  contribu- 
tions. It  covers  everything,  in  fact,  except  the 
work  of  the  men.  Is  that  correct?" 

"Practically.  It  covers  everything  except 
wear  and  deterioration  of  machinery.  And 
since  old  machinery  is  generally  replaced  by  im- 
proved machinery,  which  increases  the  output  or 
lessens  costs,  that  item  almost  balances  itself." 

"So,"  said  Father  Huetter,  "we  can  strip  it 
down  to  this — the  laborer,  with  his  bare  hands 


182        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

and  intelligence,  earns  fifty  or  sixty  dollars.  He 
gets  seventeen  to  twenty-one.  Why  does  he  not 
get  fifty?" 

"Money  is  money,"  the  Doctor  answered  crypt- 
ically. "Power  is  power.  The  owner  can  get 
men  to  earn  fifty  for  him  by  paying  them  seven- 
teen. He  does  it.  Do  you  expect  him  to  do 
otherwise?" 

"No." 

"Then,"  said  the  Doctor  conclusively,  "we  are 
Hack  where  I  began:  Capital  pays  what  it  has 
to;  Labor  gets  what  it  can." 

"Just  where  I  wanted  to  get,"  Father  Huetter 
agreed.  "You  admit,  then,  that  the  economic 
law,  which  you  set  up  as  the  Grand  Poohbah,  is 
not  a  law  at  all,  but  just  an  accident  of  our  sys- 
tem by  which  the  strong  and  resourceful  one  can 
force  the  weak  and  resourceless  many  to  give 
him  two-thirds  of  their  earnings." 

"The  law — like  our  whole  civilization — rests 
on  private  ownership."  The  Doctor  was  undis- 
turbed. 

"And  when,  in  view  of  the  Dean's  story,  did 
old  Milton  Sargent  cease  to  be  a  thieving  bank- 
rupt and  become  a  private  owner?  He  had 
nothing  in  the  beginning.  He  produced  noth- 
ing that  he  did  not  acquire  by  trickery  and  an 
accidental  weakness  in  our  criminal  law.  Just 
at  what  point  in  the  progress  of  this  mill  did  Mil- 
ton Sargent  or  his  son  become  divinely  appointed 
owner  of  anything?  It  was  fraud  and  trickery 


THE  REV.  DOCTOR  HILLIARD    183 

in  the  beginning.  It  was  fraud  and  coercion  in 
the  process  to-day.  Does  your  law  and  does  our 
civilization  rest  on  that?" 

"But,"  said  the  Doctor  wearily,  "must  we  go 
all  over  the  whole  matter  again?" 

"No,"  said  Father  Huetter  quickly,  "it  doesn't 
make  a  whistle  of  difference  whether  we  go  over 
it  again,  or  whether  we  never  went  over  it.  We 
have  merely  talked  an  evening  out  on  something 
that  we  know  nothing  at  all  about  and  that  we're 
not  interested  in." 

"Why,  my  dear  young  sir,"  exclaimed  the 
Doctor,  reddening,  "I  have  spent  my  whole  life 
in—' 

"I  know,  I  know,  Doctor,"  said  Father  Huet- 
ter quickly,  smiling  a  disarming  apology. 
"Never  think  that  we  outer  barbarians  of  mill 
towns  and  hill  towns  do  not  know  and  appreciate 
your  work.  No  man  in  America  stands  higher. 

"What  I  was  trying  to  say  was  this — you  talk 
and  think  and  write  profoundly  on  the  subject, 
from  study  and  theory.  I  talk,  more  or  less 
loosely,  from  observation  of  the  things  that  come 
under  my  eye.  The  Dean,  here,  does  not  talk 
at  all,  because  he  thinks  he  can  trust  us  to  say 
it  all,  and  more.  We  are  all  interested,  to  be 
sure. 

"But  what  is  the  measure  of  our  interest  com- 
pared to  the  interest  of  the  men  who  live  and 
fight  and  work  their  lives  out  under  the  problem? 
Will  our  broth  be  any  the  thinner? 


184        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"Why,  Doctor,  see  here.  I  can  take  you  right 
down  through  the  mill  this  minute  where  the  men 
are  working  the  night  shift,  with  a  soldier  at 
every  door,  and  I  can  pick  you  out  man  after 
man,  almost  at  random,  who  will  know  more 
about  this  than  a  lifetime  of  study  and  observa- 
tion can  ever  give  us.  Why?  Because  it  is  their 
business.  It  is  their  life. 

"Most  of  those  men  never  got  past  the  eighth 
grade  in  school.  The  foreigners,  as  you  would 
call  them,  got  less  of  school.  But  they  can  give 
3^ou  the  figures.  They  can  tell  you  more  about 
overhead  and  fixed  charges,  about  interest  on 
investment,  about  selling  and  insurance  costs, 
about  political  expenses,  about  the  thousand  and 
one  things  that  eat  up  the  earnings  of  a  mill,  than 
you  or  an  expert  accountant  could  find  in  the 
sworn  statements  of  the  company.  I  can  get 
you  more  information,  exact  and  authoritative 
information,  in  the  lathe-room  of  the  mill,  about 
the  earnings  and  expenses  of  the  company,  than 
any  director  of  the  company  can  get  at  a  direc- 
tors' meeting. 

"Are  the  men  blind?  Is  John  Sargent  a  ma- 
gician, that  he  can  shake  a  rag  before  them  and 
make  money  appear  and  disappear?  No,  Doc- 
tor. They  know  what  makes  the  money  grow. 
They  know  the  cost  of  every  ounce  of  material 
that  comes  into  that  mill,  and  they  know  what 
is  produced  out  of  it. 

"Man  alive!     Can't  you  see  the  hold  it  takes 


THE  REV.  DOCTOR  HILL1ARD    185 

on  them?  Do  they  know  about  it?  Why,  they 
see  money  in  the  making !  Their  hands  make  it. 
They  have  the  figures  and  they  know  what  they 
mean.  They  know  that,  after  the  owner — sup- 
posing that  he  is  the  owner — has  taken  out  ex- 
penses and  interest  on  what  is  his  and  a  surplus 
for  future  expansion,  their  own  hands  make  sixty 
cents  out  of  every  dollar  that  mill  earns.  And 
they  get  seventeen,  or  less.  They  want  the  dif- 
ference. Their  little  girls,  hacking  their  lives 
out  down  there  in  the  twine  mill,  want  it.  Their 
wives  want  it.  The  children  want  it.  Genera- 
tions unborn  that  are  now  being  sinned  against, 
they  are  crying  out  for  that  difference!" 

"But  this  is  Communism,"  the  Doctor  broke 
out.  "They  are  Socialists." 

"Not  by  a  long  shoot-off!"  said  Father  Huet- 
ter  in  his  excitement.  "They  are  Irish;  they  are 
Italian;  they  are  Polish;  they  are  American. 
More  than  half  of  them  are  as  good  Catholics 
as  any  in  the  world.  They  want  nothing  but 
what  is  theirs.  Is  that  Socialism?  And  they 
are  going  to  get  it.  It  is  theirs,  and  who  is 
going  to  keep  it  from  them?  Nobody  can 
keep  it  from  them.  But  some  powers  and 
classes  in  this  country  think  that  they  are  going 
to  keep  them  back.  Those  powers  will  find 
themselves  high  and  drying  on  the  wreckage- 
strewn  banks  of  this  rushing  stream  of  our  na- 
tional life. 

"Socialists?"     He    leaped    upon    the    word. 


186        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"Socialists?  What  if  they  were  pessimists,  or 
bigamists,  or  futurists?  Are  they  right  or  are 
they  wrong?  They  want  that  difference  be- 
tween seventeen  cents  and  sixty.  What  do  they 
care  about  Socialism,  or  its  doctrines,  or  its  rant? 
They  want  that  difference.  They  are  going  to 
have  it." 

"But,"  said  the  Doctor,  rallying  in  the  last 
ditch,  "you  are  giving  the  owner  nothing  for  his 
brains,  his  power  for  organization.  The  'differ- 
ence' is  largely  the  product  of  his  peculiar  type 
of  genius." 

"No."  Father  Huetter  returned.  "Not 
even  'largely.'  He  could  hire  plenty  of  mana- 
gers, for  less  than  the  salary  which  he  credits  to 
himself,  who  would  do  as  well." 

"And  you  would  halt  the  progress  of  the  race 
by  pulling  all  down  to  a  mediocre  level.  All  our 
progress  has  been  made  by  the  outstanding  ef- 
forts of  such  men  as  he.  They  would  have  noth- 
ing to  work  for." 

"Better,"  said  Father  Huetter,  "that  John 
Sargent  should  have  nothing  to  work  for,  than 
that  our  little  girls  and  boys  should  work  for  him 
for  nothing." 

"And,  what  goes  much  farther,"  said  the  Doc- 
tor, "you  destroy  the  sense  of  individuality  in  the 
man.  Socialism  and  Communism  can  have  but 
one  logical  end  in  human  morals  and  human 
thought.  When  they  have  abolished  economic 
responsibility  in  the  man,  they  must  go  on  to  re- 


THE  REV.  DOCTOR  HILLIARD    187 

lieve  him  of  his  moral  responsibilities,  his  sense 
of  right  and  wrong,  as  applied  to  himself. 
What  is  he  then  but  an  irresponsible  atom  in  a 
blind  and  fixed  cosmic  system?  Where  then  is 
free  will  or  faith  in  God,  or  anything  that  gives 
a  man  a  soul  of  his  own?  That  would  be  the 
end." 

"No."  The  Dean  arose  slowly,  stretching 
himself.  "I  have  known  the  American  people 
a  long  time.  No  'ism'  will  ever  go  very  deep 
with  them.  Men  and  women  they  are,  boys  and 
girls,  living  and  laughing,  working  and  dying, 
marrying  and  crying,  and  going  hungry  if  they 
have  to.  But  they  are  always  sound.  If  they 
have  to  use  Socialism,  as  politics,  to  get  them 
what  they  want,  well,  they  will  use  it.  But  they 
will  drop  the  'ism'  like  a  rind,  when  they  are 
through  with  it. 

"In  the  press  of  this  struggle  for  bread  and 
rights  many  are  blinded.  Blood  and  bitterness 
come  into  their  eyes,  but  it  is  not  'isms'  nor  sys- 
tems nor  theories  that  will  ever  hurt  them.  'Tis 
the  iron  and  the  canker  of  the  struggle  itself  that 
I  fear,  hardening  and  corroding  their  hearts. 
Dear  God,  send  the  end  quickly.  I  wish  I  might 
see  it. 

"What  time  will  you  say  Mass  in  the  morning, 
Doctor?" 


4  <rpHE  Irish  don't  seem  to  take  to  it,  Dean," 
•*  Mother  Mary  John  complained.  "The 
others,  now,  don't  seem  to  mind  at  all.  They 
don't  hold  back.  There's  good  bread  and  milk 
there  to  be  eaten,  and  they  take  it  without  let 
or  thank-you.  So  they  should.  Why  should 
children  thank  anybody  for  the  bread  they  get? 
Haven't  they  the  right  to  it?  But  the  Irish—!" 

"Well,  you  see,  Mother,  the  Irish  have  long 
memories." 

"Memories?  But  it's  these  babies,  I  tell  you, 
Dean;  they're  the  worst.  What  memories  have 
they?" 

"You  can  never  tell  anything  about  an  Irish 
baby,  Mother,"  the  Dean  proceeded  to  explain 
the  unexplainable.  "You  see,  some  of  them  re- 
member things  that  happened  in  Ireland  a  hun- 
dred years  ago.  I  christened  one  just  the  other 
day  and  he  had  a  look  in  his  eye  that,  I  declare, 
if  you  so  much  as  mentioned  Boyne  Water  to 
him  he'd  strike  you.  They  are  like  that." 

"I  never  know  what  you're  talking  about, 
Dean,  when  you  begin  on  the  Irish.  And  you 

188 


THE  WORK  AT  OUR  HAND  189 

know  I  don't.  But,"  she  added  slowly,  "some 
of  the  time  I  believe  some  of  it  is  true." 

Mother  Mary  John,  being  a  convert  from  one 
of  the  earliest  Vermont  families,  could  not  know 
what  was  the  matter  with  the  Irish  children; 
much  less  could  she  know  what  the  Dean  meant 
by  his  whimsical  talk. 

"At  any  rate,"  she  concluded,  "I  wish  they 
wouldn't  make  me  feel  that  I'm  degrading  them 
every  time  I  try  to  make  them  take  a  bit  of  bread 
and  milk.  There's  that  little  Monica  Connors. 
She's  about  the  size  of  a  pint  pitcher  and  she 
could  write  with  the  corners  of  her  cheek  bones, 
but  do  you  think  I  could  get  her  to  as  much  as 
look  at  the  food  here  until  I  had  promised  to 
let  her  stay  and  help  wash  up  the  cups?  And 
the  boys,  they  hang  back  along  the  wall  and  push 
each  other  forward,  until  you  fairly  have  to  grab 
them  and  force  a  bit  of  bread  into  their  hands. 

"I  don't  understand  them.  Why,  it  isn't  as 
though  they  were  grown-ups  and  you  were  ask- 
ing them  to  accept  charity.  It  isn't  charity  at 
all.  It's  their  right." 

"I  know  it,  Mother.  We  have  all  the  logic  on 
our  side,  and  the  children  are  wrong.  But,  they 
are  Irish  children,  as  you  say ;  and  the  Irish  race 
has  gone  through  things  that  make  it  forever 
chary  of  bread  that  is  given  to  it." 

"But,"  the  Mother  persisted,  "these  children 
never  heard  of  that.  Their  parents  never  knew 
anything  of  it." 


190        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"True,"  admitted  the  Dean.  "But,  don't  I 
tell  you,  the  Irish  babies  have  long  memories?" 
he  insisted  perversely. 

The  Reverend  Mother  gave  it  up.  He  and 
his  Irish  were  always  incomprehensible.  For 
thirty  years  she  had  been  learning  that. 

The  Dean  had  inadvertently  wandered  into 
the  school  at  two  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  just 
when  the  smallest  of  the  children  were  being  dis- 
missed for  the  day. 

Along  the  whole  length  of  the  lower  hall  of  the 
school  ran  a  narrow  table,  improvised  by  the  sis- 
ters out  of  boards  and  benches.  On  it  were 
spread  cups  of  milk  and  thick  slices  of  bread  for 
all. 

On  the  very  first  day  of  the  fall  term  the  Dean 
had  seen  the  pinched  look  of  the  children's  faces, 
and  he  had  taken  his  measures.  He  had  sent 
messages  up  into  the  hill  country,  to  friends  and 
old  parishioners  of  the  days  when  he  had  tended 
all  that  country  alone.  Their  response  was  in 
the  form  of  huge  cans  of  milk  that  came  down 
every  morning  anonymously  from  little  wayside 
milk  stations  on  the  O.  &  W.  and  the  Belden 
River  lines. 

The  bread  was  another  matter.  Ostensibly  it 
was  the  gift  of  bakers  in  Albany.  But  only 
Father  Huetter  could  have  told  that  the  Dean's 
little  property,  left  him  by  a  sister  dead  years 
ago,  had  been  sold  and  that  his  salary  was  hy- 
pothecated for  a  time  longer  than  he  might  rea- 


THE  WORK  AT  OUR  HAND  191 

sonably  expect  to  have  a  salary.  It  seems  that 
he  was  no  more  prudent  now  than  he  had  been  in 
that  day,  at  the  other  end  of  his  life,  when  he 
and  his  people  had  helped  finance  the  start  of 
Milton  Sargent's  mill. 

But  Father  Driscoll  was  not  thinking  of  any 
of  these  things  now.  He  was  looking  down  the 
long  rows  of  the  children,  and  seeing  the  thing 
that  the  Mother  had  complained  of. 

As  she  had  said,  the  Slavic  and  Italian  chil- 
dren marched  up  to  the  table  by  platoons  and 
stood  munching  and  drinking,  without  urging 
and  without  thanks.  Why  should  children 
thank  anybody  for  food  when  it  was  there,  just 
naturally  to  be  eaten  by  hungry  folk? 

But  the  Irish  were  plainly  different.  They 
hung  back  and  kept  their  eyes  off  the  food. 
Some,  even  the  littlest  ones,  tried  to  slip  by  un- 
noticed, and  even  when  they  were  caught  and 
made  to  take  food  they  swallowed  it  hastily,  al- 
most furtively. 

"Dear  God!"  the  Dean  murmured,  his  old 
heart  wincing  in  sympathy  and  understanding, 
"will  we  never  forget?  Those  children  learned 
that  lesson  four  and  five  generations  ago!  And 
I,  if  I  was  among  them,  I'd  be  doing  just  what 
they  are  doing.  I  couldn't  help  it.  This  comes 
of  being  born  of  a  race  that  carries  its  past  for- 
ever with  it! 

"I  should  not  have  come  here  at  this  hour.     I 


192        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

did  not  mean  to,"  he  deprecated.  "They're  bad 
enough  with  the  sisters,  but  they're  worse  when 
they  think  I'm  looking.  I'll  go  away.  And 
I'm  only  asking  them  to  eat  the  bite  that  God 
gives  them  as  their  right!  Yet  they  look  up  at 
me  out  of  eyes  that  are  sharp  with  hunger — to 
see  if  I  notice  them  taking  charity. 

"Charity!  Charity!  Dear  God  above !  What 
an  abuse  is  that  word  in  the  mouths  of  men,  when 
the  very  babies  fear  it!" 

The  Mother  had  gone  on  down  the  line  and 
was  too  far  away  to  have  heard  any  of  this  even 
if  he  had  intended  it  for  her  hearing.  He  turned 
away  sharply,  and  when  he  was  out  in  the  street 
he  walked  briskly  for  ten  minutes,  hardly  noting 
where  he  was  going. 

Old  Richard  Flanagan  halted  him  in  that  high- 
pitched,  querulous  voice  that  comes  from  a  crab- 
bed temper,  rheumatics,  and  the  North  of  Ire- 
land: 

"Where  are  you  away  to  now,  without  a  word, 
Your  Deanery?" 

The  title  of  a  Rural  Dean  in  this  country  is 
one  that  seems  to  lack  something  of  euphonious 
dignity.  The  young  people  can  address  him  as 
Dean  quite  simply  and  satisfactorily,  but  to  the 
old  people  this  seems  too  curt.  They  want 
something  that  rolls  better  on  the  tongue. 

The  Dean  stopped  short,  suddenly  remember- 
ing that  he  had  no  fixed  destination. 


THE  WORK  AT  OUR  HAND  193 

"Oh,  how  are  you,  Richard?  I  didn't  know  I 
was  this  far  up  the  street.  How's  the  rheuma- 
tism?" 

"Again  ye  had  it  ye  wouldn't  step  so  smart, 
Your  Deanery.  Will  the  min  be  paid  th'night, 
I  don't  know?"  he  queried,  with  that  high  lift 
at  the  end  of  his  voice  that  makes  a  question 
mark  for  any  form  of  words. 

"Why  not?"  said  the  Dean.  "Did  you  hear 
anything  to  the  contrary?" 

Richard  Flanagan  sat  on  his  porch  daily  from 
April  to  November.  From  his  vantage  ground, 
where  rheumatism  held  him,  he  kept  the  road  and 
took  toll  from  all  who  would  pass  on  foot.  Old 
and  young,  rich  and  poor,  male  and  female,  he 
questioned  them.  His  information  was  some- 
times true,  often  wonderful,  often  enough  wil- 
fully untrue.  But  it  was  always  voluminous  and 
comprehensive.  It  covered  everything  that  pos- 
sibly could  and  could  not  happen  in  the  range 
of  the  world.  If  he  did  not  know  the  truth, 
he  had  at  least  heard  all  sides  of  every  mat- 
ter. 

"Dinny  Corridon,"  he  piped,  "passed  here  to 
tell  me  that  there  is  no  money  at  the  mill  and 
that  the  banks  would  give  none  on  the  machines 
that  were  turned  out  this  week.  So  the  Colonel 
can  only  give  the  men  pay  checks,  and  the 
stores  won't  take  them.  I  warn  you,  the  stores 
won't  take  them;  but  the  saloons,  they  might." 

"Well,  let's  hope  it  will  not  prove  quite  so 


194        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

bad,"  said  the  Dean.  "I  think  Dinny  is  by  na- 
ture a  pessimist." 

"He  did  lie  to  me  once,"  the  old  man  admitted, 
taking  the  big  word  at  a  leap.  "But  not  by  na- 
thur,  not  by  nathur.  It  was  about  the  reservoir, 
and  I  think  he  was  put  up  to  it." 

But  the  Dean  with  a  parting  warning  about 
bad  weather  and  rheumatism  was  already  on  the 
move  up  the  street.  The  sufferer  on  the  porch 
was  left  somewhat  disgruntled  and  unsatisfied 
with  himself.  He  did  not  like  to  have  any  one 
get  by  without  paying  him  his  tribute  of  at  least 
some  little  bit  of  information. 

"Ey-ah!"  He  complained  to  the  general 
world.  "Time  was  whin  he  could  stop  to  talk 
about  a  thing  or  two;  but  now,  what  with  ad- 
visin'  governors  and  sthrikin'  sthrikes,  he  haven't 
a  minute  to — " 

"Who's  that  mumblin'  about  the  priest  behin' 
his  back?"  came  a  sharp  voice  from  within  the 
door. 

"I  only  said,"  Richard  defended,  "he  might 
stop  till  I'd  put  him  the  length  of  a  question  or 
two." 

"He  has  more  to  do  than  bringin'  grist  to  your 
cackle  mill,"  snapped  the  voice  through  the  door- 
way. 

Mr.  Flanagan  went  back  to  the  consideration 
of  his  rheumatism.  It  was  apparent  that  his 
autocratic  jurisdiction  was  limited  strictly  to  the 
eternal  forum  of  the  sidewalk.  In  winter  his 


THE  WORK  AT  OUR  HAND  195 

must  have  been  that  emptiest  of  all  human 
glories,  that  of  a  monarch  without  a  realm. 

The  Dean  turned  the  first  corner,  intending  to 
make  a  circuit  to  the  other  side  of  the  town  where 
he  remembered  that  he  had  some  calls  to  make. 

He  was  worried  by  what  Flanagan  had  told 
him.  To  be  sure,  he  had  anticipated  the  refusal 
of  the  banks  in  Milton  to  give  cash  on  the  ma- 
chinery first  completed  by  the  men.  That  had 
been  the  weak  point  in  the  Governor's  plan  from 
the  beginning — the  lack  of  actual  money. 
When  the  Governor  had  stopped  the  strike  in  the 
Milton  Machinery  works  by  putting  the  men 
back  to  work  under  martial  law,  he  should,  of 
course,  have  seen  that  there  was  plenty  of  ready 
money  to  pay  the  men.  But  the  Dean  knew  that 
there  had  been  no  time.  The  Governor  could 
not  just  then  force  through  an  appropriation  for 
the  purpose,  and  there  was  no  available  contin- 
gent fund  in  the  State  treasury  on  which  he 
could  put  his  hand. 

But  the  Dean  had  not  anticipated  that  the 
stores  would  refuse  food  for  the  pay  checks  which 
Colonel  Gardiner,  the  Governor's  representative 
in  charge  of  the  mill,  would  have  to  issue  to  the 
men  for  their  first  week's  wages.  These  checks 
would  be  in  the  name  of  the  Milton  Machinery 
Company,  and  endorsed  with  the  authority  of 
the  Governor  of  the  State.  They  would  cer- 
tainly be  redeemable  in  money  in  due  time. 

But  there  was  no  way  to  force  storekeepers  to 


196        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

accept  them  in  payment  for  food.  And  the 
Dean  remembered  the  circumstances  in  which 
nearly  all  the  merchants  of  Milton  stood,  with 
regard  to  the  Company  and  John  Sargent. 

The  genius  and  the  foresight  of  old  Milton 
Sargent  had  been  almost  diabolical.  He  had  ex- 
pected labor  and  social  troubles  from  the  begin- 
ning. And  from  the  beginning  he  had  provided 
for  them.  He  foresaw  that  the  quickest  and 
surest  weapon  against  a  strike  was  the  direct 
control  of  the  food  supply.  So,  as  soon  as  the 
first  profits  of  his  mill  came  to  him  he  put  them 
right  into  the  purchase  of  the  land  which  he  saw 
would  be  the  business  part  of  the  already  grow- 
ing village.  Then  he  opened  stores  and  secured 
all  the  trade,  so  that  his  people  brought  his  money 
back  to  him  for  everything  that  they  ate  and 
wore. 

Again  he  spread  farther  out,  as  he  foresaw  the 
coming  growth,  and  bought  up  all  the  land  upon 
which  the  little  city  of  Milton  stands  to-day. 
Most  of  this  he  sold,  lot  by  lot,  to  his  employees, 
for  homes.  His  terms  to  them  were  easy  and 
very  liberal — generally  not  more  than  three  hun- 
dred per  cent,  above  what  he  had  paid  for  the 
land.  For  this  he  received  wide  praise  as  the 
most  intelligent  and  advanced  manufacturer  in 
his  part  of  the  State.  Milton  was  pointed  out 
as  the  model  manufacturing  village,  where  every 
workingman  was  a  free  and  independent  man- 
owning  his  own  home,  you  see, 


Noted  sociological  writers  of  that  day  came  to 
Milton,  took  statistics,  nodded  wise  heads,  and 
went  away  to  write  that  Milton  Sargent  had,  for 
once  and  all,  solved  the  labor  problem.  He  had, 
by  giving  his  men  the  chance  to  own  something 
in  his  town,  so  bound  up  and  combined  his  inter- 
ests and  theirs  and  those  of  the  mill  and  the 
town  that  no  questions  could  ever  come  between 
them. 

Milton  Sargent  had  really  wished  and  had 
worked  early  and  late  to  realize  his  wish,  that 
every  head  of  family  in  his  employ  should  own  a 
home  in  Milton.  His  reasoning  was  this.  If 
they  own  their  homes  they  will  have  to  stay  in 
Milton.  There  will  never  be  any  other  mill  here 
but  mine.  If  they  own  their  homes  and  I  own 
their  jobs  and  the  supply  of  food,  they  will  have 
to  stay  here  and  work  for  me,  at  my  terms,  just 
as  long  as  they  naturally  live. 

So  he  actively  encouraged  them  to  buy  lots 
and  helped  them  to  build,  on  very  fair  terms. 
But  in  every  deed  that  he  gave  them  there  was 
one  iron-bound  restriction.  No  lot  that  he  sold 
them  could  ever  be  used  for  any  purpose  other 
than  as  a  dwelling  lot. 

With  unerring  instinct  he  predicted,  and  di- 
rected, the  commercial  growth  of  the  town,  and 
kept  in  his  own  hands  every  bit  of  property  in 
the  line  of  that  prospective  growth.  Corner  lots 
in  residence  sections  he  retained,  for  groceries — 
and  saloons.  If,  for  any  reason,  a  lot  which  he 


198        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

had  sold  became  useless  for  residence  purposes 
it  reverted  naturally  to  the  original  owner. 

When,  in  the  advance  of  public  opinion,  the 
old  system  of  company  stores,  by  which  he  sold 
necessaries  direct  to  his  employees,  became  too 
obnoxious,  he  gave  it  up.  He  did  not  really 
need  it.  He  rented  his  store  properties  to  in- 
dividuals who  should  conduct  them  as  their  own. 
He  allowed  those  individuals  to  own  their  stocks, 
but  he  gave  them  only  very  short  tenure  of  lease 
in  their  stores  and  otherwise  surrounded  them 
with  such  conditions  that  he  held  them  com- 
pletely in  his  power.  A  merchant  or  tradesman 
who  crossed  Milton  Sargent  once,  would  never, 
after  the  expiration  of  his  lease,  again  be  in  the 
position  to  do  so. 

John  Sargent,  at  his  accession  to  power  in  Mil- 
ton, had  not  changed  any  of  these  things.  He 
understood  the  system  and  knew  its  value.  He 
developed  it  so  as  to  handle  the  various  public 
utilities  of  the  town  as  they  came  into  being,  and 
he  organized  three  small  banks.  These  not  only 
gave  him  an  added  capital  with  which  to  work; 
they  also  tightened  his  hold  on  every  merchant  in 
the  little  city. 

So  the  Dean  was  worried.  He  knew  that  at 
a  word  from  John  Sargent  every  grocer  and  pro- 
vision man  and  clothier  in  Milton  would  feel 
obliged  to  refuse  the  pay  checks  that  were  to  be 
issued  in  the  name  of  the  Milton  Machinery 
Company. 


THE  WORK  AT  OUR  HAND  199 

He  saw  the  wall  of  entrenched  power  against 
which  the  Governor  had  run  in  his  effort  to  force 
John  Sargent  to  arbitrate  the  strike  in  Milton. 
And  he  thought  he  saw  further  and  more  intri- 
cate difficulties  ahead,  when  the  mill,  in  order  to 
run  as  the  Governor  had  started  it,  must  try  to 
buy  raw  materials  from  capitalist  friends  and 
natural  allies  of  John  Sargent.  But  he  was  not 
disheartened.  He  believed,  did  this  old  man. 
Seventy-four  years  of  disillusion  had  not  dimmed 
the  boyish  faith  of  his  heart. 

He  went  about  his  business  with  head  erect, 
not  forgetting  to  say  a  prayer  by  the  way  for 
the  courage  and  the  wisdom  of  that  square- 
headed  young  Presbyterian,  the  Governor,  to 
whom  he  had  taken  a  great  fancy. 

When  he  came  home  he  found  Nonie  Gaylor 
waiting  to  talk  with  him.  He  had  not  seen 
Nonie  Gaylor  since  the  night  when  her  promised 
husband,  young  Harry  Loyd,  was  shot  down  in 
the  road  in  front  of  the  mill  by  John  Sargent's 
guards.  He  had  heard  that  she  sat  all  day  in  her 
little  home  by  the  River  Road,  seeing  no  one, 
hugging  her  grief  in  silence. 

That  was  not  good  for  her,  he  knew.  And  he 
had  thought,  Nonie  being  alone  in  the  world, 
that  he  would  send  some  of  the  Sisters  to  her  to 
persuade  her  to  go  away  for  a  time.  But,  no. 
He  remembered  the  ten  years  when  Nonie  was 
growing  up  alone  with  a  dissolute  old  father,  and 
how  she  had  shielded  that  father  and  gone  out  to 


200        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

work  for  him  and  how  she  had  insisted  that  he 
was  the  best  of  fathers  and  that  she  loved  him 
and  was  proud  of  him  and  how  she  had  dared  the 
world  to  sympathize  with  her. 

His  ears  had  taught  him  that  there  are  some 
souls  who  cannot  be  helped  by  anything  or  any- 
body in  this  world.  They  carry  the  burdens  of 
others,  but  their  own  they  must  carry  alone. 
Their  fires  burn  inwardly,  and  they  have  to  ask 
their  own  questions  of  God  and  life.  Nonie 
Gaylor  was  one  of  these. 

Nothing  about  the  girl  told  in  any  way  of 
tragedy.  She  was  dressed  simply  in  the  neat 
blacks  and  whites  that  everybody  associated  with 
her.  Her  manner  was  entirely  natural  and  easy. 

The  Dean  marveled  at  the  self-control,  the 
powerful  springs  of  will,  that  could  so  cover  a 
tortured  heart  and  smooth  out  a  girlishly  fresh 
face  for  the  world  to  see.  But  he  feared  it.  A 
fire  that  is  too  closely  pent  will  burst  some  time. 
And  its  bursting  is  madness. 

"I  only  came  in  to  tell  you,  Dean,  that  I  am 
going  away,"  she  said,  quite  casually;  "and  to 
give  up  my  Sodality  band." 

"Ah,  I  had  thought  of  that,"  agreed  the  Dean, 
taking  up  her  manner.  "I  had  thought  of  ad- 
vising you  to  go  away  for  a  while,  a  change;  a 
change  is  always  good,  you  know." 

"Yes.  But  I  am  going  away  for  good.  I  am 
never  coming  back  to  Milton." 


THE  WORK  AT  OUR  HAND  201 

"Well,  now  I  had  hardly  expected  that,  Nonie. 
You  see,  you  somehow  seem  to  belong  here  with 
us.  You  have — you  have  plans,  I  suppose? 
Where  will  you  go?" 

"Does  it  matter?"  she  said  with  a  pitiful  little 
shrug,  dropping  her  mask  for  the  instant. 

Father  Driscoll  waited  a  moment,  giving  her 
time  to  command  herself.  Then  he  said  slowly : 

"No.  I  suppose  it  does  not.  We  have  to 
take  ourselves  with  us,  anyway.  So  the  sur- 
roundings cannot  matter  very  much." 

The  girl  started.  He  had  spoken  the  very 
thought  that  had  been  going  the  dizzy  round  of 
her  mind,  sleeping  or  waking,  for  all  these  days : 
what  use  was  it  to  go,  when  she  could  not  get 
away  from  herself? 

"I  know,"  she  said.  "That  is  true.  I  cannot 
hope  to  get  away  from  myself.  And  I  have 
thought  and  thought  and  planned.  And  I  can- 
not come  to  anything.  It  is  all  so  useless. 

"But  I  must  get  away.  Can't  you  see,  Dean, 
that  I  have  to  get  away  from  here.  It  doesn't 
matter  at  all  where  I  go.  But  I  must  go. 
Can't  you  see  that?"  she  appealed. 

"I  am  not  sure  that  I  do.  Tell  me,  child." 
He  wanted  to  make  her  talk,  to  keep  her  talking, 
so  that  she  might  ease  down  some  of  the  strain 
under  which  her  mind  labored. 

"I  thought  I  wanted  to  go  and  hide  myself  in 
a  convent,"  she  began  aimlessly.  "Oh,  not  be- 


202        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

cause  I  belonged  there,  but  just  to  crawl  into 
some  place  where  the  world  couldn't  find  me  and 
hurt  me  any  more.  But — ' 

"No.  That  wouldn't  do,"  said  the  Dean 
lightly.  "The  idea  is  too  medieval,  and  the  nov- 
elists have  overworked  it  already.  That  is,  I 
mean,  Nonie,  a  convent  is  a  place  for  people 
who  have  just  the  one  reason  for  being  there." 

"I  knew  that.  But  I  have  to  work.  I  have 
to  go  on  living.  Though  I  don't  see  why,"  she 
added,  with  a  sudden  rush  of  bitterness. 

"The  river  runs  right  by  my  door,"  she  went 
on  quietly;  "it  is  always  friendly  to  me.  Since 
I  was  a  baby  I  have  never  been  afraid  of  it." 

The  Dean  was  silent.  Every  soul  must  cross 
these  dark  bridges  by  itself. 

"There  is  a  place,  you  know  it,  Dean,  where 
the  water  from  the  canal  tumbles  down  the  waste 
weir  into  the  river.  It  has  made  a  great  dark 
pool  there  at  the  edge  of  the  river  and  the  water 
races  round  and  round,  so  quiet  and  so  swift. 

"I  used  to  go  and  sit  there  sometimes,  years 
ago,  when  father  was — was — 

"I  have  gone  there  sometimes  lately,  and 
looked  down  into  the  dark  of  the  water,  and  won- 
dered: Why  not? 

"It  looked  so  cool  and  so  certain,  so  depend- 
able. Whatever  I  got,  down  under  the  water 
there,  I  could  keep,  couldn't  I?  It  wouldn't  be 
snatched  away  from  me,  like  Harry  was." 

Suddenly  she  shivered.     Then,  with  a  visible 


THE  WORK  AT  OUR  HAND  203 

effort,  she  straightened  herself  and  threw  back 
her  shoulders. 

The  Dean  was  satisfied.  She  had  crossed  her 
bridge. 

"You  have  to  work,  and  you  do  not  feel  that 
you  can  bear  to  go  back  into  the  mill.  That  is 
it,  is  it  not?"  said  the  Dean  steadily. 

"How  could  I?  How  could  I?"  she  broke 
out.  "Do  you  remember  that  four  times  every 
day — every  day  of  all  my  life,  four  times  I  should 
have  to  pass  the  spot  where  John  Sargent  mur- 
dered my  Harry?  It  is  not  the  horror  of  it. 
Don't  think  that.  I  could  kneel  every  time  on 
the  spot. 

"But  if  I  did,  and  if  I  said  my  prayers  every 
time,  do  you  know  that  I  would  still  get  up  from 
my  knees  every  time  with  just  one  thought- — al- 
ways one  thought — to  kill  John  Sargent?  Think 
of  that!  Four  times  every  day  for  years  and 
years  of  life,  a  murderess  in  my  heart. 

"Oh,  you  are  a  priest.  You  have  always  been 
good.  You  do  not  know  what  anger  and  hate 
is  like. 

"And  then  I  should  go  in  to  do  John  Sargent's 
work  for  him!  Think  of  it!  To  make  him 
richer,  so  that  he  might  kill  the  Harrys  of  other 
girls. 

"And  do  you  know  why  I  had  the  position  that 
I  had  in  the  mill,  and  why  I  was,  in  a  few  months 
more,  to  be  put  over  all  the  women  in  the  mill? 
Think  of  that!  Five  hundred  women  and  girls 


204        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

under  me,  a  girl  of  twenty- two!  I  was  to  be  the 
highest  paid  woman  operative  in  New  York 
State.  And  why?  Why?  Because  I  had 
proved  that  I  could  get  more  work  and  drive 
more  speed  out  of  other  poor,  fainting  women 
and  girls,  and  save  more  money  for  John  Sar- 
gent. 

"Think  of  that,  year  in  and  year  out.  And 
then  think  of  that  spot  that  I  would  pass — four 
times  a  day,  every  day,  for  ever  and  ever!" 

Father  Driscoll  had  no  answer  ready.  The 
girl  sat  picking  at  the  finger  ends  of  her  gloves. 
After  a  little  he  said: 

"Nonie,  would  you  rather  not  have  had  your 
love  at  all  and  not  have  suffered,  or  have  had  it 
and  suffered  as  you  have?" 

"I  had  three  years  of  Harry's  love,"  she  said 
quickly;  "for  one  hour  of  it  I  would  have  suf- 
fered all!" 

•  "Then,  child,  you  do  not  hate  God  for  giving 
you  the  love,  only  for  taking  it — " 

"God?  Why,  God  didn't  have  anything  to 
do  with  it.  How  could  He?  What  did  I  do 
to—?" 

"That  is  our  mistake,  child,  nearly  always.  It 
is  not  what  we  have  done.  It  is  what  God  may 
have  for  us  to  do. 

"Nonie,  will  you  listen  to  me  a  moment,  and 
try  to  forget  that  I  am  just  a  blundering  old  man 
who  knows  no  more  of  the  ways  of  God  than 
you  do? 


THE  WORK  AT  OUR  HAND  205 

"The  Company,  as  you  say,  had  picked  you 
out  and  trained  you  for  a  purpose,  to  drive  all 
the  others.  Why?  Because  they  saw  things  in 
you  that  made  them  believe  you  could  do  it  better 
than  another. 

"Suppose  that  God  foresaw  something  to  be 
done  that  you  could  do  better  than  another. 
Suppose  He  saw  the  time  coming  when  the 
women  in  the  mill  would  need  not  a  driver,  but 
a  sister  and  a  guide — one  who  had  suffered  more 
and  who  was  stronger  and  wiser  by  that  suffer- 
ing. Suppose  that  the  way  to  such  wisdom  and 
to  such  helpfulness  lay  only  through  great  suf- 
fering. And  that  one  was  you — would  you  re- 
fuse the  suffering?" 

"No !  no !"  she  cried,  springing  to  her  feet.  "I 
would  not  refuse.  God  knows  I  would  welcome 
it.  Anything,  anything!  If  only  it  were  of 
some  use,  some  good  to  the  others !" 

"I  know  that,  of  course,  child. 

"Now,  you  might  go  out  to  nurse  the  wounded 
on  battlefields,  or  you  might  go  out  to  tell  the 
stoiy  of  your  love  and  your  suffering  to  your 
sisters  through  the  country  and  preach  Suffrage 
to  them,  or  Socialism.  In  either  case  you  would 
do  good,  no  doubt.  But  the  work  God  wishes  us 
to  do  He  generally  places  near  our  hand. 

"I  am  old,  child,  and  the  changes  come  fast. 
I  see  one  coming  here  that  will  give  you  a  work 
to  do  that  will  fill  your  arms  and  your  heart. 
Can  you  believe  and  have  faith  for  a  little  while  ?" 


206        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"Yes.  I  believe.  I  don't  know  why,  but  I 
do. 

"I  will  stay  and  work,  as  long  as  you  say, 
Dean.  But — I  think  I'll  go  home  now." 

She  went  out  hurriedly,  without  another  word. 
She  knew  that  she  could  no  longer  control  her- 
self and  she  wanted  to  be  alone. 

The  Dean  walked  over  into  his  study  and  sat 
down  heavily  at  his  desk. 

"God  send  that  I  did  right!"  he  prayed. 

It  was  the  dark  threatening  end  of  an  autumn 
day.  Three  thousand  men  were  crowding  each 
other  out  through  the  gates  of  the  Milton  Ma- 
chinery Company's  plant.  Colonel  Gardiner 
had  not  attempted  to  start  the  twine  mill,  so 
none  of  the  women  had  been  at  work.  The  men 
had  been  at  work  ten  days  and  this  was  the  reg- 
ular pay  night. 

There  was  no  money  in  the  mill.  The  men 
had  seen  thousands  of  dollars'  worth  of  machin- 
ery go  out  to  fill  orders  on  file  all  through  the 
strike.  But  the  banks  of  Milton,  controlled  by 
John  Sargent,  would  not  advance  a  cent  of 
money  on  the  invoices.  The  Colonel  had  ap- 
pealed frantically  to  the  Governor,  but  the  lat- 
ter had  answered  that  pay  checks  were  sufficient 
for  the  present.  And  in  any  case,  where  could 
he  get  forty  thousand  dollars  in  cash? 

The  men  did  not  understand.  Rumors  had 
been  running  through  the  mill  all  week.  They 


THE  WORK  AT  OUR  HAND  207 

knew  that  they  were  there  working  under  the 
protection  of  the  military  of  the  State.  But 
they  mistrusted  the  whole  thing.  The  idea  that 
the  State  could,  even  if  it  sincerely  wished,  do 
anything  effectively  for  them  and  for  their  in- 
terest had  been  exploded  so  many  times  that  they 
were  slow  to  believe. 

Some  said  it  was  a  grandstand  play  of  the 
Governor,  for  politics.  It  would  fizzle  out,  as 
all  such  things  did.  Others  argued  that  it  was 
all  a  trick  of  Sargent,  to  get  them  back  to  work 
and  break  the  spirit  of  their  strike. 

They  took  their  pay  checks.  What  was  the 
use  of  refusing  them?  But  they  showed  that 
they  had  no  great  faith  in  them. 

Many  had  worked  the  whole  time  without  a 
real  meal.  There  was  no  credit  for  them  in  any 
store.  They  were  hungry  and  sick.  They  could 
get  something  for  the  checks. 

They  were  wrong.  They  could  not  get  any- 
thing with  the  checks.  They  trooped  into  stores 
and  markets.  Meat  men  and  provision  men, 
who  had  been  clinging  desperately  to  their  stocks 
for  months  and  fighting  off  bankruptcy  until 
work  should  begin,  now  looked  sadly  at  the  pay 
checks — which  they  knew  would  be  perfectly 
good — and  shook  their  heads.  The  grim  word 
had  gone  out  from  John  Sargent  that  no  man 
should  dare  sell  an  ounce  of  food  on  those  checks. 

But  there  was  one  thing  that  could  be  had  with 
the  checks.  Drink- — all  the  drink  the  men 


208        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

wanted.  The  notices  stood  in  all  the  saloons,  as 
John  Sargent  had  directed.  The  checks  were 
good.  There  was  plenty  of  free  lunch.  But 
there  was  no  change  for  the  checks.  No  bar 
would  cash  any  part  of  a  check.  The  check  was 
good.  But  it  must  be  left  in  the  bar  until  it  was 
used  up. 

Remember  that  this  crowd  of  men  worked  all 
day  in  heat  and  grime  and  iron  dust,  at  trades  in 
which  practically  all  men  drink  some.  The 
strength  and  the  wickedness  of  Sargent's  plan- 
ning need  no  detailing. 

Some  of  the  men,  the  irresponsible  and  the 
weak,  left  their  checks  in  the  bars.  But  the  most 
of  them,  after  tramping  vaguely  about  and  be- 
ing refused  at  one  store  after  another,  shifted 
slowly  off  into  the  side  streets  and  crept  home, 
ugly,  hungry,  hopeless. 

Where  it  came  from  no  man  could  tell.  Prob- 
ably it  was  at  first  a  burry,  angry  murmur  that 
ran  up  and  down  the  wells  of  tenement  houses, 
from  one  pinched  home  to  another.  It  rose 
above  the  squalls  of  unfed,  disappointed  chil- 
dren. It  was  the  sulky,  upbraiding  cry  of  the 
tigress  in  the  lair,  when  the  feckless  lord  comes 
home  empty-mouthed  from  the  hunt. 

It  ran  down  dark  stairs,  the  cry,  and  out  into 
dark,  foul  streets.  It  beat  up  against  closed 
windows,  and  drew  them  open,  and  drew  out  un- 
kempt heads  to  answer  it. 

The  answer  came  in  every  Slavic  tongue,  from 


THE  WORK  AT  OUR  HAND  209 

Lett  to  Czech.  It  came  in  four  Italian  dialects. 
It  came  in  every  known  accent  of  English.  It 
did  not  need  any  language,  for  it  was  the  cry  of 
the  women,  who  do  eternally  understand  each 
other  in  need. 

Out  of  dark  alleys  they  came,  splashing 
through  puddles,  out  of  bare  little  cottages,  out 
of  solid-looking  homes,  they  came  hurrying  and 
rushing  into  solid  groups.  They  did  not  stop 
for  argument  or  discussion.  The  one  cry,  the 
one  impulse  that  had  started  them  all,  told  them 
where  they  were  going  and  what  they  were  going 
to  do. 

Across  the  railroad  tracks,  from  Polack  Town 
and  Little  Italy,  they  came  pouring  in  groups 
and  troops  of  hundreds,  large-boned,  guttural- 
voiced  Slav  women,  shrill-throated,  sturdy  Ital- 
ian women — hunger  in  their  eyes,  mother  fury 
in  their  hearts. 

Now  these  met  other  crowding,  pushing  tides 
of  women,  tall,  thin-lipped  hill  women  of  the 
country  itself,  and  broad-chested  Irish- American 
women,  no  less  of  the  country.  All  the  races  of 
all  the  women  of  earth  could  have  met  here  and 
talked  the  common  language  of  the  cries  of  their 
babies. 

Into  the  blocks  of  State  Street  where  the  big 
grocery  and  provision  stores  were  grouped  they 
came  reeling  and  whirling,  wave  after  wave  of 
faces,  white  and  care-fretted  under  the  flare  of 
the  lights. 


210        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

They  had  no  war  cry.  They  carried  no  ban- 
ner. They  wanted  no  advertising.  They  were 
just  everybody's  wife  and  sister,  with  a  pay  check 
in  her  clenched  hand,  come  to  get  the  food  that 
her  man  had  earned  for  her  children  and  her. 

They  were  in  the  stores  before  astonished  and 
frightened  clerks  could  think  of  locking  doors. 

Now  the  next  quarter  of  an  hour  was  not 
pretty.  It  is  better  to  pass  it  over  without  de- 
scription. 

These  women  had  for  months  been  looking 
down  into  the  hunger-big  eyes  of  their  children. 
Their  bared  nerves  had  been  flecked  by  the  ques- 
tions, the  eternal,  Why?  Why?  of  the  child. 
Why  could  it  not  have  butter  and  sugar  on  its 
bread?  Why  could  it  not  have  even  butter? 
Why,  finally,  could  it  not  have  bread? 

They  have  seen  the  plump,  round  little  bodies 
of  their  babies  falling  away  under  the  ribs. 
They  were  elementary  mothers  of  men,  these 
women.  They  loved  to  kiss  the  round,  paddy 
cushions  of  fat  that  lie  at  the  back  of  a  baby  neck. 
And  they  had  found  there  only  the  pinched  out- 
croppings  of  hard  little  bones. 

They  had  seen  their  rough,  noisy  boys  sud- 
denly sit  down  in  the  thick  of  their  play,  because 
they  were  weak  and  dizzy  for  food.  They  had 
caught  their  little  girls  scraping  and  scratching 
their  cheeks  with  wire  hair  brushes — to  take  the 
white  out. 

Lately  they  had  seen  their  husbands  and  their 


THE  WORK  AT  OUR  HAND  211 

growing  boys,  whom  it  was  their  pride  to  feed, 
come  staggering  home  to  eat:  and  there  was  no 
food. 

Food!  Food!  The  lack  of  it  had  tortured 
their  days.  The  dreams  of  it  had  tormented 
their  nights.  How  many  nights  had  they 
walked  among  heaps  and  stacks  of  food,  and 
when  they  reached  out  for  it,  always  it  turned  to 
something  else?  How  many  times  had  they  not 
dreamed  the  pantry  full  of  food,  only  to  awaken 
to  the  gaunt  reality? 

Some  of  them  had  seen  their  nurslings  die  at 
their  breasts.  There  was  no  food  there.  And 
they  had  followed  a  little  box  up  the  long  River 
Road  to  the  hills  and  the  cemetery,  and  wanted 
to  stay  there. 

And  always  their  nightmares  had  been  of  food, 
food  in  the  hand,  food  in  the  very  mouth. 

Now  here  was  food  piled  all  about  them,  bread, 
and  meat,  and  vegetables  in  tins,  and  meat,  meat 
hanging  in  strips,  hanging  in  sacks,  everywhere. 
Their  dreams,  their  very  dreams ! 

There  was  none  to  stop  them.  They  were  a 
hundred,  two  hundred,  as  many  as  could  get  into 
a  store.  They  had  only  to  throw  down  pay 
checks  and  take,  and  take,  and  take! 

If  some  turned  sick  and  hysterical  and 
screamed  at  the  sight  of  it  all;  if  some  fainted;  if 
some  grabbed  and  grabbed,  more  than  they  could 
carry;  if  some  crowded  and  pushed  and  tram- 
pled; if  they  finally  jammed  all  together  and 


212        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

screamed  and  fought,  impotently,  still  hugging 
their  loot — well,  the  wonder  would  have  been, 
rather,  if  they  had  not  done  these  things. 

Up  through  the  pushing,  tugging  mass  of 
women  that  was  struggling  on  the  sidewalks 
unable  to  get  into  the  stores,  came  a  slender,  hol- 
low-eyed girl  in  blacks  and  whites.  Women 
gave  her  way  because  her  tragedy  and  her  grief 
had  set  her  apart.  Then,  too,  she  was  a  captain 
of  women.  Her  business  was  to  organize  and 
command. 

Swiftly,  as  she  came  to  each  group  she  plucked 
two  or  three  women  apart  to  her  and  gave  them 
quick,  sharp  commands.  They  knew  her;  they 
were  accustomed  to  obey  her.  Her  curt,  every- 
day voice  brought  them  back  from  hysteria,  to 
sense. 

They  did  as  she  told  them.  Quietly  urging 
their  way  into  a  store,  they  took  command. 
They  grabbed  pencils  and  paper  bags,  or  any- 
thing to  write  upon,  and  made  hurried,  scrappy 
accounts  of  what  each  woman  had.  Then  they 
began  forcing  a  line  of  those  who  were  supplied 
out  of  the  doors.  The  screaming  stopped. 
What  had  been  a  riot  of  maddened  women  re- 
solved itself,  in  five  minutes,  into  lines  of  quiet 
shoppers  who  furtively  tucked  up  wisps  of  strag- 
gled hair  and  who  only  showed  what  they  had 
been  through  by  the  quick,  quiet  sobbing  of  their 
bosoms. 

A  line  of  soldiers,  called  by  frantic  storekeep- 


THE  WORK  AT  OUR  HAND  218 

ers,  came  double-quicking  up  the  middle  of  the 
street.  But,  though  they  came  quickly,  men 
were  there  before  them.  Men,  sheepish  of  face, 
but  grim,  too,  slipped  out  of  side  streets  and  lined 
themselves  two  and  three  deep  along  the  curb. 
They  did  not  approve  of  whatever  the  women 
were  doing.  Men  are  ever  more  law-bound  and 
helplessly  conservative  in  a  crisis  than  are 
women.  But,  if  the  women  were  bound  to  do  it, 
they  should  not  be  molested. 

The  thin  single  line  of  soldiers,  stretched  the 
length  of  the  street,  had  no  orders  to  shoot  down 
lines  of  men  in  order  to  clear  the  stores  of  women. 
They  stood  there,  foolish  and  useless.  And  when 
Nonie  Gaylor  calmly  walked  through  them  to 
the  other  side  of  the  street,  to  see  how  her  lieu- 
tenants were  doing  over  there,  the  company 
through  which  she  walked  grounded  arms  with 
a  smart  rattle. 

At  ten  o'clock  Father  Huetter,  coming  in,  re- 
ported to  the  Dean  the  manner  of  these  things, 
and  that  the  town  was  full  fed. 

The  Dean  laid  down  his  breviary,  to  say: 

"Thank  God!  I  said  better  to  the  child  than 
I  knew — the  work  at  our  hand,  that  is  what  He 
would  have  us  do." 

But  Father  Huetter  did  not  understand.  He 
was  very  tired  and  he  went  on  up  to  bed. 


CHAPTER  IX 
"HIS  STRONG  CITY" 

OUT  on  the  rolling  uplands  the  golden  rus- 
sets of  the  early  autumn  had  been  fighting 
a  desperate  rear-guard  battle  for  a  week  now 
with  the  forces  of  black,  frosty  death  that  came 
sweeping  down  the  mountains.  The  forces  of 
cold  and  death  had  conquered  everywhere. 
From  the  upper  ribs  of  the  mountains  the  hope- 
less dun  color  of  oncoming  winter  reached  down 
over  the  foothills  and  down  into  the  valleys  till 
it  came  even  into  the  room  twhere  the  Dean  of 
Milton  sat  reading  the  Book  of  Proverbs. 

The  room  was  suddenly  chilled  and  darkened 
by  the  shadow  of  a  low,  drifting  cloud.  The 
Dean  shivered  and  looked  up  from  his  book,  re- 
peating aloud  the  words  he  had  last  read:  "The 
rich  man's  wealth  is  his  strong  city:  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  poor  is  their  poverty!" 

Over  the  shoulder  of  Orrin  Mountain  and 
down  across  the  breast  of  it,  like  the  sash  of  some 
gaunt  order  of  death,  he  saw  a  black  cloud  drap- 
ing itself.  That  was  a  moving  snowstorm, 
twenty  miles  away,  hurrying  down  across  the 
slope  of  the  mountain.  In  another  two  weeks  or 
so  a  brother  of  that  snowstorm  would  come  rush- 

214 


"HIS  STRONG  CITY'  215 

ing  down  across  the  foothills  and  would  howl 
through  the  streets  of  Milton,  barking  up  dark 
stairways  and  whining  under  damp  floors.  On 
its  breath  it  would  bring  pneumonia  and  in  lungs 
already  weakened  by  half-starvation  it  would  lay 
the  seeds  of  consumption. 

In  the  older  days  he  had  never  given  thought 
to  the  coming  of  winter.  Always  he  had  loved 
the  bite  of  the  wind  on  a  cold  night  ride  to  some 
lonely  house  in  the  hills.  It  had  brought  blood 
to  his  cheeks,  courage  and  love  to  his  heart. 
Now  the  thought  of  it  made  him  shudder.  Age 
has  no  surplus  blood  for  thrills. 

But  he  was  not  thinking  of  himself.  In  those 
older  days  he  had  seen  his  people,  a  strong- 
limbed,  full-blooded,  vigorous  race,  fighting  the 
battle  of  the  strong  with  winter.  They  were 
used  to  look  full  into  his  roaring  throat  and  laugh 
while  they  plowed  and  hewed  their  way  from 
woodland  to  river-bed. 

In  high,  dry  houses.,  before  heaping  fires,  with 
illimitable  woodpiles  standing  at  their  very  doors, 
winter  had  no  menace  for  them.  Now  his  peo- 
ple lived  in  dank,  dripping  houses,  where  they 
huddled  over  a  few  inadequate  coals.  They 
crept  out  of  damp  beds,  out  into  the  fog  of  the 
morning,  to  go  to  John  Sargent's  mill.  There 
they  stewed  all  day  in  a  fog  and  swirl  of  con- 
densing steam,  and  at  night  they  scurried  home 
with  what  little  of  thin  blood  was  left  in  them, 
the  icy  wind  freezing  their  wet  clothes  to  their 


216        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

limbs.  To  them,  winter  was  not  a  season  of  the 
year:  it  was  an  implacable,  vicious  enemy,  a 
scourge,  a  ravaging  curse.  It  decimated  them. 

Those  who  live  in  moderate  climates  will  never 
know  anything  of  the  terrible  threat  which  win- 
ter lays  upon  our  people  of  the  northern  mill 
towns.  It  is  a  real  and  abiding  terror  with  them. 

A  great  and  plain-spoken  economist  recently 
discussing  the  question  of  why  the  lines  of  in- 
dustrial advance  go  always  from  east  to  west, 
never  from  north  to  south,  put  the  real  reason  in 
a  breath.  It  is  not,  he  said,  because  the  northern 
peoples  love  work  more  or  are  naturally  more 
industrious.  It  is  because  they  have  always  the 
pinch  of  winter  at  their  back.  This  was  what 
the  words  of  the  Proverb  meant  to  the  Dean. 
What  chance  had  his  people  against  the  economic 
forces  that  held  them  always  on  the  edge  of  de- 
pendence? 

In  their  long  struggle  with  the  Milton  Ma- 
chinery Company  they  had  so  far  been  able  to  pit 
their  patience  and  endurance  against  the  money 
power  of  the  Company.  But  now  nature  itself 
was  coming  to  fight  John  Sargent's  battle  for 
him.  To  John  Sargent  the  coming  of  winter 
meant  only  the  coming  of  a  new  and  inexpensive 
ally  to  him  in  his  battle  with  the  people.  The 
strong  city  of  his  wealth  around  him  made  him 
immune  to  the  blast.  He  would  not  suffer.  He 
could  even  sit  within,  calmly  reckoning  the  fury 
of  the  wind,  counting  every  roar  of  it  as  a  new 


"HIS  STRONG  CITY3  217 

weapon  in  his  hands  against  these  obstinate  peo- 
ple who  refused  to  go  on  producing  for  him. 
Their  poverty  was  indeed  their  destruction. 

The  grim,  pitiless  truth  of  the  lesson  caught 
the  Dean  by  the  throat.  It  was  already  a  time- 
worn  truism,  printed  on  the  heart  of  the  people, 
when  the  Author  of  Proverbs  put  it  into  the 
words  of  the  Book.  And  thirty  centuries,  and 
all  the  revolutions  of  earth,  had  not  taken  from 
it  a  jot  of  its  terrible  meaning! 

The  upper  and  the  nether  millstones  ground 
on  unceasingly.  Above,  the  pressure  of  power 
and  wealth  and  privilege;  below,  the  pressure  of 
hunger  and  cold;  and  between  lay  the  poor  of 
all  the  earth,  forever  being  crushed  by  the  two 
forces ! 

The  tower  of  the  Cosmopolitan  Building 
stands  with  its  feet  upon  the  solid  rock,  thirty 
yards  deep  in  the  quicksand  and  mud  of  Nassau 
Street.  From  the  rock  it  shoots  up  its  thirty- 
five  stories  into  the  air.  East,  west,  and  south 
it  looks  out  over  miles  of  jumbled  buildings;  over 
the  East  River  to  the  ridge  of  Long  Island;  over 
the  fretting  bosom  of  the  bay  to  the  wide  sweep 
of  the  ocean  beyond;  over  the  North  River  and 
the  level  stretches  of  New  Jersey  to  the  great 
heart  of  the  country.  To  the  north  it  cannot 
overlook  much,  for  its  view  is  cut  by  other  Ba- 
bylonic  pretensions  like  itself.  But  it  overlooks 
these,  too,  in  another  way.  It  has  its  eye  upon 


218        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

every  foot  of  the  priceless  ground  of  Manhattan 
Island.  It  has  its  eye  upon  every  moving  train 
in  America.  It  has  its  ear  to  the  hum  of  every 
turning  wheel  in  the  land.  It  has  the  Sub- 
Treasury  of  the  United  States  at  its  knee.  It 
listens  to  the  count  of  gold  in  every  smallest  bank 
of  the  nation. 

On  the  surface,  it  seems  that  the  wealth  of  the 
country  is  traded  and  bargained  for  on  the  floor 
of  a  certain  building  in  Broad  Street.  It  is  not 
so.  The  Stock  Exchange  is  merely  an  enlarge- 
ment of  its  own  tickers,  marking  the  marchings 
and  counter-marchings  of  forces  set  in  motion  by 
the  battles  and  the  treaties  of  a  few  men  who 
work  in  the  secluded  fastnesses  of  the  Cosmo- 
politan and  other  buildings  about  it.  Into  this 
building  stream  the  inviolate  private  wires  that 
connect  men  ear  to  ear  with  impenetrable  private 
offices  a  thousand  miles  away.  From  it  go  out 
the  single,  cryptic  words  that  sweep  pawns  off 
the  chess-board  of  Wall  Street.  It  is  the  cold, 
wire-strung  brain  of  the  Strong  City  of  the 
wealth  of  the  Western  Continent. 

The  twenty-fourth  floor  of  the  tower  is  a  single 
great  room,  light  and  airy  as  a  flat  mountain- 
top.  Ingenious  shading  tempers  the  light  that 
floods  in  from  all  four  sides  of  the  room  to  a  per- 
fect restfulness  for  the  eyes,  and  air  brought 
down  from  the  very  tip  of  the  tower  and  washed 
and  heated  or  cooled,  according  to  the  season, 
makes  each  breath  a  sigh  of  respiratory  luxury. 


"HIS  STRONG  CITY'  219 

John  Sargent  sat  at  a  table.  His  eye,  roving 
restlessly  out  of  window  to  east  and  south,  took 
in  the  far-away  line  of  the  open  sea  and  noted 
idly  that  the  first  northeaster  of  the  season  was 
sweeping  down  from  New  England.  A  fifty- 
mile  gale  was  tearing  round  the  corners  of  the 
tower.  But  not  even  a  tremor  or  an  echo  of  it 
was  to  be  noticed  within. 

The  storm  outside  had  no  interest  for  him. 
As  the  heavily-muffled  doors  of  the  room  swung 
open,  his  eyes  jerked  back  irritably  to  watch  the 
men  who  were  every  few  moments  coming  into 
the  room  to  lunch.  They  came  in  by  twos  and 
threes  and  gravitated  quietly  to  tables  where 
other  men  were  waiting  for  them.  There  were 
men  here  whose  every  moment  of  a  business  day 
is  so  closely  watched,  for  rumor  and  gossip  of  the 
Street,  that  they  could  not  visit  another  man's 
office  without  starting  a  column  of  speculative 
gossip  in  the  next  morning's  papers. 

Here,  in  the  democracy  of  privileged  privacy, 
away  from  the  prying  of  reporters,  a  man  could 
drop  casually  down  at  a  table  in  front  of  another 
man,  and  they  could  have  the  route  of  a  proposed 
railroad  settled  or  have  set  a  firm  on  the  way 
to  ruin  before  the  gravy  had  time  to  harden  on 
their  plates. 

John  Sargent  was  waiting  for  two  men.  One 
of  them  was  the  greatest  and  the  most  feared  of 
all  the  rulers  of  the  fortunes  of  men  in  this  coun- 
try. It  was  not  that  he  was  so  very  wealthy — 


though  he  was  wealthy  beyond  the  dreams  of  the 
world  of  even  thirty  years  ago — but  because  he 
had  made  himself  the  keeper  of  the  very  gates  of 
wealth.  He  had  the  credit  of  the  country  in  his 
grip ;  so  that  no  man  was  really  worth  this  figure 
or  that  figure,  but  only  the  amount  of  credit 
which  Jasper  Macon  would  place  opposite  that 
man's  name.  Because  Jasper  Macon  could  at 
any  moment  shake  to  its  foundations  any  given 
bank  in  the  country,  credit  was  his  to  extend  or 
to  withhold.  Credit,  that  illusive,  impossible 
thing  which  is  the  life-breath  of  our  commercial 
and  industrial  body,  this  man  could  choke  off 
from  every  other  man  who  needed  it. 

The  other  man  was  the  wisest  and  the  farthest- 
seeing  of  the  race  which  since  the  days  of  Esau 
has  lived  upon  the  mistakes  of  others.  Gather- 
ing where  he  had  not  strewn,  reaping  where  he 
had  not  sown,  winning  where  he  had  not  risked, 
he  had  no  illusions.  The  past  as  well  as  the  fu- 
ture held  for  him  incontestable  lessons.  Though 
the  breeding  of  money  and  the  study  of  "things 
as  they  are"  was  the  business  of  his  life,  he  could 
still  remember  that  things  might  not  always  be 
as  they  were.  The  Jew  is  your  true  discounter 
of  things  future,  because  for  him  Jehovah,  a  per- 
sonal God,  is  ever  within  striking  distance.  By 
training  and  the  force  of  the  times  in  which  he 
lived,  Nathan  Oppenheim  was  an  individualistic 
money-getter.  By  nature  he  was  a  patriarchal 
Socialist. 


"HIS  STRONG  CITY'  221 

Jasper  Macon  came  first,  striding  across  the 
room,  his  great,  malformed  nose  making  straight 
for  where  Sargent  sat.  Oppenheim  followed  at 
the  next  swing  of  the  door.  But,  though  he  well 
knew  just  where  he  was  to  go,  he  did  not  make  a 
direct  course. 

When  Sargent  had  seated  the  two  of  them  and 
had  signaled  the  waiter  to  lay  the  already  or- 
dered luncheon,  he  turned  to  Macon  with  a  cer- 
tain air  of  nervous  deference  that  was  very 
strange  on  him. 

"Last  night  and  this  morning,"  he  said,  "I 
talked  with  the  old-line  leaders  of  the  Party, 
from  up- State  districts  and  from  the  City. 
They  are  sore  enough  and  disappointed  enough 
in  the  Governor  to  vote  for  his  impeachment. 
But  they  are  afraid.  Bailey,  the  Republican 
State  leader,  as  you  know,  has  the  votes  at  his 
command  to  do  the  work.  But  he  is  afraid." 

"Of  what?"  asked  Macon  noncommittally. 

"They  don't  see  where  the  money's  coming 
from." 

"Money,"  said  Macon,  "what  has  money  to  do 
with  the  matter?  Their  votes  belong  to  the 
Party.  They  are  sent  to  the  legislature  by  the 
people;  that  is,  the  majority  party  of  their  dis- 
tricts— to  do  what  the  Party  wants  done.  Do 
they  expect  to  be  bribed  to  do  their  duty?" 

"Well,  it  isn't  quite  that,  Mr.  Macon,  not  quite 
that.  There  was  a  time — but  not  now.  You 
see,  they  are  looking  ahead.  If  they  should  vote 


222        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

to  impeach  Gordon  Fuller  for  unlawfully  con- 
fiscating my  mill  and  property,  next  summer 
they  would  have  to  go  back  to  their  people  look- 
ing for  renomination  and  re-election.  And  there 
would  be  a  howl.  They  would  find  opposition. 
There  would  be  a  contest  in  every  district.  Con- 
tests are  expensive.  They  want  to  know  just 
where  they  are  to  get  the  money." 

"But  there  are  always  roads  and  bridges  to  be 
built,"  Mr.  Oppenheim  suggested  lightly. 

Macon  shot  one  swift,  questioning  glance  at 
the  speaker,  but  the  countenance  of  the  wise  man 
showed  nothing  but  a  bland  cynicism. 

Jasper  Macon  had,  in  the  course  of  his  climb  to 
the  absolute  power  which  was  now  his,  used  many 
instruments,  in  many  ways.  Some  of  those  in- 
struments— men — had  bent  under  his  hand.  Be- 
fore they  went  to  jail,  or  died,  they  had  threat- 
ened to  tell  things.  Generally  they  had  told 
nothing.  But  he  had  not  always  been  able  to 
preserve  the  lofty  moral  tone  of  these  later 
days. 

He  did  not  know  how  much  Oppenheim  had 
meant,  but  he  was  touched  and  angry.  His  an- 
ger in  these  days  always  took  the  form  of  severe 
rectitude. 

"If,"  he  pronounced,  "the  Governor  has  broken 
the  Constitution  of  the  State,  he  must  be  im- 
peached. These  men  are  bound  by  their  oaths, 
no  matter  what  it  may  cost  them." 

A  thin,  enigmatic  smile  spread  over  Oppen- 


"HIS  STRONG  CITY'  223 

heim's  lean,  pocked  face.  He  was  often  obliged 
to  admire  the  masterful  piracy  of  Macon's  meth- 
ods. But  to  him,  a  product  of  a  race  which  by 
fear  and  force  has  always  been  obliged  to  be 
adept  in  the  dissimulation  of  every  emotion,  this 
man's  sudden  poses  of  virtue  were  almost  comi- 
cally childish.  He  knew  what  Macon  was  think- 
ing. John  Sargent  knew  what  Macon  was 
thinking.  Why  should  Macon  insist  on  striking 
a  pose,  when  there  was  neither  need  nor  profit? 

But  John  Sargent  was  not  smiling.  An  en- 
larged artery  was  pounding  blood  up  through 
his  fat  neck  till  it  rang  in  his  ears.  He  was  fa- 
cing ruin,  and  he  knew  it.  But  he  did  not  cringe. 
He  looked  straight  under  the  beetling  brows  of 
Macon  and  broke  through  the  pose. 

"You  mean,"  he  said,  "that  you  have  decided 
that  Fuller  is  not  to  be  impeached?" 

"Have  I  said  anything  like  that?"  Macon  ap- 
pealed to  Oppenheim.  But  the  Jew  merely 
shrugged  his  sharp  shoulders.  He  was  an  in- 
terested spectator,  not  an  umpire. 

"And  have  you  decided,  too,"  Sargent  went 
on,  unheeding,  "to  let  the  Governor  have  material 
from  your  steel  mills  and  a  market  for  the  ma- 
chines, so  that  he  can  run  my  own  mill  over  my 
head?  Are  you  going  to  do  that?" 

"Well,  I  told  you  three  years  ago  that  you  had 
better  come  into  the  International,"  Macon  re- 
turned bluntly. 


224        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"Do  you  mean  that  ?  Do  you  mean  that?  Is 
this  your  revenge,  because  I  was  man  enough 
not  to  crawl  under  you  then?" 

"Don't  talk  nonsense.  What  has  revenge  to 
do  with  plans  the  size  of  mine  ?  I  told  you  then 
that  your  plant  was  wasteful.  It  is  too  far  from 
Pittsburgh  and  too  far  from  tidewater  also,  to 
be  economical." 

"So  now  you  are  going  to  crush  me  out, 
cheaply,  eh?"  Sargent  taunted. 

"You?  I  hadn't  thought  of  you."  Even 
Oppenheim's  narrow  eyes  opened  at  the  stupen- 
dous, and  evidently  honest,  egotism  of  the  an- 
swer. Sargent  sat  dumb. 

"This  young  Paladin  of  a  Governor  of  ours," 
Macon  went  on  to  reveal  himself,  "is  due  to  come 
a  cropper.  He  rides  too  high,  and  he  looks  still 
higher.  But  if  we  fight  him  here,  it  will  give  him 
political  capital  to  draw  on  for  years.  If  we 
try  to  impeach  him  on  this  thing,  do  you  know 
where  it  will  probably  land  him?" 

"In  the  White  House,"  said  Oppenheim  sim- 


"Right.  And  he's  a  madman,  and  dangerous. 
Now,"  Macon  took  them  broadly  into  his  confi- 
dence, "you  cannot  fight  a  lunatic.  You  may 
kill  him,  but  the  chances  are  against  yourself  — 
and  there's  no  profit  either  way.  But,  if  you 
can  convince  other  people  that  he  is  a  lunatic,  you 
can  have  him  put  out  of  the  way.  That  is  what 
must  be  done  with  this  man  Fuller.  He  must 


"HIS  STRONG  CITY''  221 

Be  given  a  chance  to  show  that  he  is  a  lunatic. 
Let  him  go  on.  Let  him  run  the  mill  at  a  loss, 
for  a  time.  I  will  see  that  it  is  at  a  loss. 
Then  he  will  have  to  begin  cutting  down  wages. 
The  Socialists  and  the  Labor  people  will  get 
after  him,  and  that  will  be  the  end  of  him  and  his 
experiment.  It  will  make  a  laughing-stock  of 
this  whole  Socialistic  and  Communistic  move- 
ment for  years  to  come." 

"But,"  said  Sargent,  "where  will  my  mill,  my 
business,  be  when  you  and  he  get  through  with 
it?" 

"In  the  scrap  heap,  where  it  belongs — where  it 
would  have  been  any  time  these  three  years  if  the 
International  had  thought  it  would  pay  to  go 
after  you." 

The  cool,  even  brutality  of  this  stunned  Sar- 
gent as  a  blow  between  the  eyes  would  have  done. 
He  dropped  the  fork  with  which  he  had  been 
prodding  at  his  fish  and  sat  back  staring. 

Macon  went  on : 

"Then  you  can  go  into  the  International,  as 
you  should  have  done  long  ago.  You  won't  have 
much  to  bring  in  by  that  time,  but  they  will  take 
care  of  you.  They'll  give  you  your  contracts, 
enough  to  keep  you  going  eight  or  nine  months 
of  the  year.  That'll  be  enough  for  you.  It's  all 
your  mill  should  ever  run  anyway.  If  you  had 
been  shutting  down  three  months  out  of  every 
year,  as  you  were  told  to  do,  you'd  never  have 
any  labor  trouble. 


226        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"But  that's  the  trouble  with  you  fellows  that 
think  you're  independent.  You  run  the  whole 
year  round  and  pile  up  the  market.  Then  you 
wonder  why  the  market  goes  to  pieces,  and  why 
you  have  strikes. 

"If  you  had  anything  in  your  head  to  see  with, 
you'd  see  that  a  market  has  to  be  coaxed  and 
starved  a  little.  And  you'd  see  that  labor  has 
to  be  coaxed  and  starved  a  little.  If  your  mill 
was  shut  down  three  months  every  year  your  peo- 
ple wouldn't  be  striking,  they'd  be  too  busy,  pay- 
ing up  back  grocery  bills,  when  they  did  get  to 
work,  to  think  of  striking." 

Now  this  was  one  thing  that  the  S argents  had 
never  done.  They  had  never  voluntarily  shut 
their  mill  doors,  in  the  face  of  a  possible  profit, 
in  order  to  keep  their  employees  in  a  chastened 
state  of  mind.  John  Sargent  was  horrified  at 
the  idea. 

"Sir,  my  men  must  have  work,  they  must  live." 

Macon  leaned  across  the  table,  leering  gro- 
tesquely. 

"Sargent,  shut  up.  You  care  as  much  about 
your  men,  dead  or  alive,  as  you  do  about  the 
water  that  runs  over  your  dam." 

Macon  was  willing  enough  to  pose  on  his  own 
account.  But  he  resented  having  any  one  strike 
an  attitude  for  his  benefit. 

Sargent  saw  that  the  last  rag  of  pretense  be* 
tween  himself  and  Macon  had  dropped.  They 
were  now  down  to  naked,  fighting  truth.  He 


"HIS  STRONG  CITY'  227 

held  his  hand  out  over  the  table  toward  Macon. 

"You  see  that  hand,"  he  said.  "It  shakes. 
That  means  I  am  not  going  to  live  long.  I  feel 
it  and  I've  been  told  so — several  times.  But 
I'm  going  to  live  long  enough,  and  that  hand  will 
always  be  steady  enough,  for  one  thing.  Before 
you  and  the  pack  of  wolves  that  follow  you  get  a 
chance  at  my  mill  I'll  blow  the  whole  of  it  to 
smithereens,  and  myself  with  it!" 

"Well — who'd  miss  it,  or  you?" 

"That  is  hardly  necessary,  Mr.  Macon,"  said 
Oppenheim,  breaking  into  the  charged  pause 
which  followed  Macon's  retort.  "You  could  say 
that,  with  some  truth,  to  every  man  living." 

But  Sargent  had  no  answer.  Macon  had 
struck  deeper  than  he  knew.  He  had  merely 
meant  to  show  Sargent  how  small  were  he  and 
his  mill  in  the  giant  combination,  which  Macon 
held  in  his  hand,  of  all  the  great  industrial  pro- 
ducers of  the  country.  Sargent  had  caught  a 
deeper  meaning.  He  did  not  hear  Oppenheim's 
protest.  Macon's  words  were  pounding  down 
into  his  soul — Who  would  miss  him?  Who 
would  miss  him?  Not  one!  Not  one  of  all  the 
men — or  women — that  lived  would  care  a  straw! 
Not  one! 

He  was  fifty- four  years  old.  He  was  going  to 
die  soon.  And  all  that  he  could  do,  all  that  he 
could  threaten  was  to  cut  off  a  possible  year  or 
so  of  his  own  life.  And  this  big,  beetle-browed 
man  had  nothing  but  a  jeer  for  his  threat.  It 


228        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

was  unthinkable — but  it  was  true.  John  Sar- 
gent, owner  of  men,  master  of  men,  four  thou- 
sand of  them,  and  this  was  the  sum  of  him !  He 
had  the  world's  permission  to  step  off  into  what- 
ever dark  place  there  was,  at  any  time  that  suited 
him.  He  was  assured  that  the  world  would  not 
be  in  the  least  inconvenienced  by  his  going. 

His  mind  jumped  to  Milton  and  those  there 
whom  he  called  his  men.  Men  there  had  been 
willing  to  give  their  lives  to  take  Jim  Loyd  out 
of  jail.  He  had  seen  men  and  women  praying 
for  the  soul  of  Harry  Loyd.  Who  would  say 
a  prayer  for  his  soul,  supposing  that  he  had  such 
a — 

His  wife  had  never  loved  him.  She  had  not 
even  hated  him.  In  the  end,  she  had  merely 
turned  her  back  on  him,  and  died.  To  his  one 
boy,  a  weakling  and  a  drunkard,  he  paid  ten 
thousand  dollars  a  year — practically  blackmail — 
to  keep  him  in  Europe. 

A  friend?  Where  could  he  have  made  a 
friend  among  men  like  these  two,  men  who  only 
waited  for  a  false  step  of  his  to  trip  him? 

Of  all  the  men  that  he  had  ever  seen  his  heart 
had  turned  to  just  one.  And  that  man  hated 
him,  above  the  hate  of  all  others.  It  was  one  of 
the  bitter  quips  of  fate,  that  the  one  man  on 
whose  shoulder  he  would  have  liked  to  lay  his 
hand  in  friendship  and  complete  trust  was  Jim 
Loyd,  his  most  implacable  enemy. 

Once,  in  the  night,  when  it  was  very  dark,  and 


"HIS  STRONG  CITY'  229 

he  saw  the  face  of  Death  set  toward  him,  he  had 
cried  out:  "It's  a  lie!  All  a  lie.  There  is  no 
God.  If  there  was,  He  would  have  given  me  a 
son  like  Loyd — a  man — my  kind  of  man !" 

Macon  was  right.  Who  would  miss  him? 
And  his  futile  little  threat  of  self-destruction — 
what  did  it  amount  to?  Only  the  angry  whim- 
pering of  a  beaten  child. 

When  his  mind  came  back  to  where  they  were 
sitting,  Oppenheim  was  saying: 

"You  are  not  estimating  that  situation  right, 
Mr.  Macon.  There  is  something  unusual  about 
it.  You  could  not  be  sure  that  it  would  work 
out  the  way  you  expect.  It  has  not  been  an  or- 
dinary strike  at  all." 

"All  strikes  are  alike,"  said  Macon  gruffly. 
"Some  are  badly  handled — that  is  the  only  differ- 
ence." 

"No,"  Oppenheim  contended,  "this  was  differ- 
ent. Mr.  Sargent's  people  are  Socialists,  a  lot 
of  them.  Oh,  not  the  kind  you  are  thinking  of," 
he  said,  as  Macon  snorted  his  contempt,  "not  the 
vociferous,  press-agent  kind.  These  are  the 
quiet,  unwinking  kind  of  Socialists,  that  know 
what  they  want  and  are  going  to  get  it. 

"Look  out  for  them,  I  say.     Look  out! 

"Also,"  he  went  on,  "his  people  had  resources. 
Many  of  them  owned  their  own  homes." 

"Criminal  folly  ever  to  have  allowed  that,  Sar- 
gent— you  see  it  now,"  said  Macon,  turning 
again  to  Sargent. 


230        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"You  are  both  wrong,"  said  Sargent  dully. 
"Do  you  think  that  I  could  not  have  silenced  or 
tricked  or  bought  all  the  Socialists  that  that  little 
town  could  hold? 

"And  for  the  men  to  own  their  own  homes  was 
my  father's  policy,  and  it  has  been  mine.  It  was 
right.  It  always  held  the  men  tied  to  my  town 
and  my  mill.  It  worked. 

"No.  Socialism  did  not  beat  me.  The  fact 
that  some  of  my  men  were  prepared,  that  did 
not  beat  me.  I  had  to  fight  something  else.  I 
had  to  fight  something  that — so  they  tell  me — 
no  man  yet  has  been  able  to  fight  successfully. 
I  had  to  fight  the  Catholic  Church!" 

The  climax  was  impressive.  But  Macon  was 
not  impressed.  He  leaned  over  the  table  glower- 
ing. 

"Nonsense,"  he  grunted.  "I  own  three 
churches." 

The  son  of  Israel  opened  his  lips  to  say  some- 
thing. But  he  shut  them  with  a  queer  smile  and 
leaned  back  in  his  chair.  These  Christians,  he  re- 
flected, were  always  interesting  and  worth  listen- 
ing to  when  they  were  minded  to  discuss  the  thing 
about  which  they  knew  least,  their  religion. 

"I  mean,"  said  Macon,  posing  again,  as  though 
a  little  ashamed  of  his  frank  cynicism,  "the 
Church  is  all  right.  There  is  no  reason  why  a 
man  should  ever  have  trouble  with  it.  In  its  own 
place,  and  sympathetically  treated,  it  is  an  aid  to 
business  peace  and  security." 


"HIS  STRONG  CITY'1  231 

"I  guess,"  said  Sargent,  "we  are  talking  about 
different  kinds  of  churches.  This  is  not  the 
velvet-padded,  soporific  kind.  It's  a  real  church, 
if  there  is  such  a  thing. 

"I  suppose  there's  no  use  trying  to  make  you 
understand.  But  I'm  going  to  try.  For  my- 
self, I  don't  pretend  to  understand.  But  you, 
with  your  advantages — you  say  you  own  three 
churches — you  may  be  able  to  explain  it." 

He  paused  for  a  swift,  curious  glance  at  the 
masked  face  of  Oppenheim  who  sat  matching  his 
ringer  nails  together.  "I  am  a  fool,"  he  said  to 
himself,  "trying  to  tell  this  thing  to  this  brass- 
bound  hypocrite,  and  to  a  Jew."  But  he  gripped 
his  facts  stubbornly  and  went  on: 

"When  I  thought  the  strike  had  gone  on  too 
long,  I  went  up  there  to  take  a  hand  myself. 
There  was  a  young  fellow  named  Loyd  in  charge 
of  the  strike.  He  was  a  Socialist,  that's  what 
they  told  me.  Well,  he's  the  same  kind  of  a 
Socialist  that  you  are,  Macon ;  he'd  sweep  you  or 
me  or  anybody  else  that  stood  in  his  way  into  the 
gutters  or  Tophet,  to  get  what  he  wants.  He's 
that  kind  of  Socialist,  just  your  kind  and  my 
kind. 

"I  offered  him  fifty  thousand  dollars  to  break 
the  strike.  Now,  there's  just  where  the  differ- 
ence comes.  Put  you  or  me  in  his  place,  and 
we'd  have  taken  the  fifty  thousand.  He  didn't." 

"He  didn't  want  it,"  said  Macon;  "that's 
all." 


232        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"Want  it?  Say,  if  I  live  to  be  a  thousand,  I'll 
never  see  a  man  want  anything  as  Jim  Loyd 
wanted  that  fifty  thousand.  Why,  he  was  reach- 
ing out  his  hand  for  it! 

"And  something  caught  him  and  pulled  his 
hand  back. 

"Then  he  wanted  to  kill  me.  He  wanted  to 
do  that  even  more  than  the  minute  before  he  had 
wanted  to  take  the  money.  But  he  ran  out  of 
the  room.  Remember,  he  wanted  to  kill  me. 
And  he  could  have  done  it  with  his  hands,  as  you 
break  a  stalk  of  celery.  He  didn't  do  it. 

"On  Labor  Day  I  shipped  in  all  the  trouble- 
makers and  red-eyed  orators  that  I  could  find  in 
that  part  of  the  State.  With  a  little  assistance 
from  me,  they  had  the  strikers  worked  up  to  the 
riot  point.  In  another  minute  they'd  have  been 
pulling  the  stones  up  out  of  the  street.  Then 
something  stepped  in  and  sent  them  quietly  about 
their  business. 

"I  wired  the  Governor  for  troops.  Something 
stepped  in  behind  me,  and  stopped  their  coming. 

"A  boy,  Jim  Loyd's  brother,  was  killed  by  my 
guards.  Through  all  that  night  that  whole  town 
hunted  me  as  they  would  have  hunted  a  mad 
dog.  And  a  day  after  that,  the  whole  crowd, 
thousands  of  them,  walked  up  past  my  mill,  fol- 
lowing that  boy's  body  and  praying  for  his  soul. 
And  they  wouldn't  so  much  as  look  up  to  curse 
me,  where  I  stood  at  the  window  of  my  office. 
Something  had  stepped  in  between  them  and  me. 


"HIS  STRONG  CITY'  233 

"I  framed  up  an  explosion  in  my  mill,  and 
made  Jim  Loyd  guilty  of  it — by  means  of  a 
couple  of  suborned  witnesses.  He  is  in  jail  now 
awaiting  trial.  He  was  able  and  ready  to  break 
out  of  there,  lead  four  thousand  men  behind  him 
and  sack  my  mill  and  the  town  and  loot  every- 
thing in  it.  He  could  have  produced  a  minia- 
ture civil  war,  in  a  night. 

"He  was  able  to  do  it.  He  was  ready  to  do  it. 
He  wanted  to  do  it.  And  something  stepped  in 
to  stop  him. 

"I  went  to  the  Governor,  demanding  protec- 
tion. Something  stepped  in  and  made  him  send 
troops,  not  to  protect  me  but  to  confiscate  my 
plant  and  run  it  to  my  ruin. 

"Now  what  held  Jim  Loyd's  hand  back  from 
my  money  and  my  throat?  He  wasn't  afraid. 
Afraid?  If  I  had  him  for  a  son,  I  wouldn't  be 
here  to-day  asking  you  for  help.  I'd  have  him 
fighting  you  to  a  standstill  for  the  control  of  this 
country. 

"What  kept  him  quiet  in  jail,  when  he  could 
have  walked  out?  What  kept  those  men  from 
stoning  me  to  death?  What  gave  Gordon 
Fuller,  a  machine-made  governor,  the  brains  and 
the  grit  to  mount  this  high  horse  that  he's  riding? 
I  tell  you  it  was  the  power  of  the  Catholic 
Church." 

"Sargent,"  said  Macon  surlily,  "either  your 
head  is  softening,  or  you  are  keeping  something 
back — some  personal  element.  The  Catholic 


234        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

Church  isn't  a  ghost,  or  a  fourth  dimension.  It's 
made  of  men." 

"You  are  right,"  Sargent  admitted.  "There 
is  a  personal  element.  There  is  an  old  priest  up 
there.  He  walks  round  with  his  hands  behind 
his  back.  He's  the  sworn  crony  of  every  bad 
boy  in  the  town.  He  knows  who  threw  the  stone. 
But  he  never  tells." 

"David  Harum  in  a  Roman  collar,  eh?" 
laughed  Macon. 

"Not  a  bit  of  it.  Or,  maybe,  some  of  that,  but 
a  whole  lot  of  everything  else  besides.  That 
man — name's  Driscoll — holds  the  heart  and  soul 
of  his  people  in  the  flat  of  his  hand. 

"Protestant  and  Catholic,  Turk — and  Atheist 
believe  in  him,  even  Italians.  He  can  wind  that 
whole  town  about  his  finger. 

"At  every  step  I  have  made  that  man  has  met 
me  and  turned  me  back.  And  what's  his 
program?  What  do  you  think?  The  Ten 
Commandments.  Whether  he's  talking  to  a 
jailbird  or  a  sulky  little  girl  or  the  Governor  of 
the  State  he'll  whip  out  those  ten  by-laws  and 
insist  on  measuring  the  whole  thing  by  them. 
He  even  shook  the  obsolete  old  yardstick  at  me." 

"But,  those  commandments  are  so  old,"  said 
Oppenheim  sarcastically,  "that  they  are  now 
revolutionary.  He  should  be  restrained.  Has 
he  no  superior,  no  bishop  who  should  curb  him?" 

"I   guess   you're   thinking   of   one   of  those 


"HIS  STRONG  CITY'  235 

churches  that  Macon  owns,"  said  Sargent  drily. 

"Ah,  of  course!  I  could  not  be  expected  to 
know,  you  see." 

"Nevertheless,"  said  Macon,  brushing  aside 
the  by-play,  "you  should  have  had  him  moved  out 
of  your  way." 

"How?  I  tell  you  the  man  has  never  said  a 
word  that  was  not  in  direct  line  with  those  Com- 
mandments. He  preaches  nothing  but  straight 
Gospel,  and  somehow  it  hits  every  time.  I  tell 
you  it  is  not  the  man  that  has  beaten  me  at  every 
turn:  it  is  the  inherited,  gray  wisdom  of  the 
Church  itself." 

"You  talk  like  an  English  review,"  said  Ma- 
con contemptuously.  "The  priest  was  in  your 
way.  You  should  have  had  him  removed.  You 
suborned  perjury  to  put  Loyd  in  jail.  If  Loyd 
is  guilty  of  conspiring  to  blow  up  your  mill — and 
it's  your  business  to  prove  that  he  is;  and  if  the 
priest,  as  you  say,  was  giving  Loyd  advice,  then, 
the  inference  is  plain — the  priest  had  knowledge 
of  the  conspiracy.  You  don't  have  to  prove 
that.  The  mere  whisper  of  it,  the  mere  mention 
of  his  name  in  such  a  connexion  would  be 
enough  to  make  his  bishop  remove  him  tem- 
porarily, anyway." 

Sargent  sat  for  a  long  time  looking  steadily 
into  the  unblinking  black  eyes  of  the  man  op- 
posite him.  Finally  he  said: 

"Macon,  I  made  a  silly  threat  a  while  ago, 


236        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

Well,  what  you  advise  would  be  suicide,  almost 
as  direct  and  quick  as  if  I  used  a  pistol  on  my- 
self. You  realize  that,  don't  you?" 

Macon  answered  levelly : 

"It  is  my  answer  to  your  demand  for  help 
against  the  Governor.  You  have  been  a  thorn 
in  the  side  of  the  machinery  business  for  years. 
You  have  been  a  freebooter  when  other  men  have 
combined  wisely  and  for  common  benefit.  You 
have  mishandled  your  strike  so  that  your  town 
will  never  again  be  a  peaceful  manufacturing 
unit.  You  have  given  the  Governor  a  chance 
to  try  an  experiment  that  may  shake  the  whole 
industrial  system  of  the  country. 

"You  deserve  to  be  crushed.  Instead,  I  am 
showing  you  how  you  could  have  saved  your- 
self, how  you  may  yet  break  up  the  whole  situa- 
tion. 

"The  Governor  took  over  your  mill  because 
he  had  faith  in  the  old  priest's  wisdom  and  judg- 
ment. Remove  the  priest,  stir  up  a  big  enough 
rumpus,  and  the  Governor  will  lose  his  nerve. 
Are  you  afraid  to  try  it? 

"Do  it,"  Macon  went  on,  as  he  rose  and  threw 
down  his  napkin,  "do  it  at  once — or  be  ready  to 
turn  your  mill  over  to  us,  the  International, 
within  two  months." 

Without  another  word,  Macon  turned  and 
stalked  straight  to  the  door,  followed  at  a  few 
paces  by  the  silent  Oppenheim. 

John  Sargent  had  not  risen  with  the  other  two. 


"HIS  STRONG  CITY3  237 

When  they  had  gone,  he  still  sat  looking  dully 
down  at  the  storm  that  was  lashing  the  bay. 

The  Strong  City  of  his  wealth  was  crumbling 
about  him,  and  he  shivered  in  a  quaking,  mar- 
row-freezing ague  of  despair  and  failure. 

Finally,  he  pushed  the  table  away  and  went 
down  to  his  offices,  ten  floors  below.  As  he 
passed  through  his  outer  office  he  gave  the  girl 
at  the  switchboard  a  dozen  numbers,  with  orders 
to  connect  them  with  his  private  phone  as  fast 
as  she  could  get  them. 

A  short,  sharp  question,  an  equally  short,  de- 
cisive answer  from  each  man  whom  he  called, 
told  him  all  that  he  needed  to  know.  The  men 
were  leaders  and  masters  of  the  Assembly. 
They  were  all  of  one  mind.  The  Governor  was 
not  to  be  impeached.  The  legislature  would  not 
interfere  with  the  Governor's  acts  in  Milton. 

It  meant  that  the  Governor  was  to  be  allowed 
to  run  John  Sargent's  mill  until  he  should  bank- 
rupt it,  or  until  he  should  be  forced  to  cut  wages. 
In  either  case,  it  would  serve  two  purposes.  It 
would  show  that  the  Socialist  idea  of  govern- 
ment ownership  of  productive  industries  was 
farcical.  It  would  put  a  ridiculous  end  to  Gor- 
don Fuller's  career. 

John  Sargent  was  to  be  merely  the  negligible 
victim  of  it  all.  His  fortune,  his  plant,  the  life 
work  of  his  father  and  himself,  was  to  be  thrown 
out,  like  a  piece  of  red  meat,  to  stop  for  a  mo- 
ment the  onrush  of  the  pursuing  wolf,  Socialism. 


238        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

Sargent  remembered  a  story  he  had  once  read 
of  five  unarmed  men  in  a  sleigh  being  pursued  by 
timber-wolves.  When  the  pack  came  too  close, 
four  of  the  men  threw  the  fifth,  the  weakest,  out 
to  the  wolves,  to  stop  them.  The  pursuit  was 
delayed,  but  it  came  on  again.  Twice  more  the 
weakest  man  remaining  was  thrown  out,  until 
only  two  were  left.  These  two  struggled,  each 
trying  to  give  himself  the  last  chance  of  safety, 
until,  just  as  they  were  near  a  village  and  help, 
they  fell  locked  together,  back  into  the  pack. 

It  was  not  a  pretty  story,  and  it  was  altogether 
improbable.  But  John  Sargent  thought  of  it 
for  a  long  time.  Out  of  his  thinking,  he  came 
to  an  illuminating  conclusion.  His  whole  life 
had  been  based  on  a  mistake.  He  had  lived  and 
thought  and  acted  out  his  life  as  a  member  of  a 
class,  the  Capitalist  class.  As  a  member  of  that 
class  he  was  bound  to  conserve  and  preserve 
things  that  are,  as  they  are,  in  order  that  wealth 
and  brains  and  responsible  power  might  keep 
the  world  in  its  appointed  course. 

Now  he  reasoned:  There  is  no  such  thing  as 
a  class  of  wealthy,  powerful  men.  The  very 
things  that  make  them  wealthy  and  powerful 
force  them  to  fight  to  crush  each  other.  The 
process  of  combination  and  elimination  will  go  on 
till  there  are  just  two  really  wealthy  men  in  the 
country.  Then,  they  mil  throw  each  other  to 
the  pack. 

He  went  to  his  house  that  night  and  made  his 


"HIS  STRONG  CITY3  239 

will.  No.  He  was  not  going  to  die.  It  was  an 
astonishing  will.  The  attorney  who  drew  it 
made  no  comment,  except  to  register  mentally 
that,  in  spite  of  the  will,  John  Sargent  was  of 
sound  mind. 

Later  John  Sargent  boarded  the  Adirondack 
Limited.  He  was  going  back  to  Milton  for  a 
last  fight.  He  was  going  to  fight  that  mysteri- 
ous power,  personified  in  Father  Driscoll,  which 
had  baffled  him.  He  was  going  to  fight  Gordon 
Fuller.  He  was  going  to  fight  Jasper  Macon 
and  what  he  had  called  his  own  class. 

Against  the  first  two  of  his  foes  he  had  no 
bitterness.  He  would  fight  as  the  lone  stag 
fights — because  he  is  a  fighter. 

Against  the  last,  against  Jasper  Macon  and 
his  class,  he  could  not  lose.  That  astonishing 
will  would  carry  on  his  fight  for  a  century. 


CHAPTER  X 
FATHER  LYNCH'S  WISDOM 

'  'T^HE  Governor  did  wrong,"  Father  Lynch 
•••  pronounced. 

He  spoke  without  haste  and  without  preju- 
dice. His  manner,  as  he  settled  back  in  his  chair 
and  critically  picked  out  a  match  from  the  box 
at  his  elbow,  told  his  neighbors  that  while  he  ex- 
pected further  argument,  and  would  perforce 
listen  to  it,  his  judgment  would  stand. 

For  fifteen  minutes  Father  Huetter  ex- 
plained, argued,  and  reasoned  with  brilliancy 
and  ardor.  He  showed  how  the  Governor  had 
from  the  beginning  acted  with  prudence  and 
firmness  and  from  the  simplest  and  clearest  of 
motives.  His  action  had  averted  violence  and 
bloodshed.  It  had  shown  that  government 
could  be,  after  all,  efficient  and  real.  And, 
finally,  it  had  brought  John  Sargent  to  terms 
and  had  shown  a  way  for  the  speedy  settlement 
of  all  future  strikes  in  the  country.  All  this  and 
more  the  young  priest  advanced  and  proved. 

When  Father  Huetter  had  quite  exhausted  his 
arguments  and  his  enthusiasm,  Father  Lynch 
repeated  his  decision  in  exactly  the  same  words, 

240 


FATHER  LYNCH'S  WISDOM    241 

but  with  an  added  air  of  judicial  calmness  and 
certitude. 

He  had  the  highest  respect  for  the  young 
man's  learning,  and  loved  him  for  the  fresh, 
eager,  young  heart  that  he  brought  to  the  service 
of  God  and  of  the  queer,  outlandish  peoples 
among  whom  he  worked.  But  Father  Huetter 
had  received  education  in  such  unseemly  places 
as  Naples  and  Cracow.  Moreover,  he  collogued 
openly  and  in  their  own  tongues  with  Italians 
and  Poles  and  Czechs  and  what  not.  Moreover, 
he  was  young.  Father  Lynch  made  excuse  for 
him  on  all  three  grounds.  These  things  did  not 
fit  a  man  to  know  the  real  motives  of  men.  He 
held  his  ground  placidly,  and  waited  for  the 
Dean  to  take  up  the  argument. 

"It  may  be  we're  too  confident,  Father  Pat- 
rick," said  the  old  Dean  in  mild-mannered  guile. 
"What  should  the  Governor  have  done?" 

"I  am  not  his  adviser,"  Father  Lynch  re- 
minded the  Dean,  with  a  broad  smile. 

He  did  not  propose  to  leave  his  secure  seat  as 
judge,  to  be  heckled  as  a  witness. 

"I  say  he  did  you  all  wrong;  neither  more  nor 
less." 

For  twenty-five  years  now  Father  Lynch  had 
been  coming  down  once  a  month  from  his  rather 
lonely  hills  for  a  few  hours  of  talk  with  the  Dean. 

He  always  came  in  hurried  and  a  trifle  out  of 
breath,  explaining  that  Jie  had  had  business  in 
Milton  and  now  had  barely  time  to  catch  his  train 


242        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

for  home.  It  would  not  be  worth  while  to  sit 
down — he  would  just  shake  hands  and  run.  In 
fact,  he  should  not  have  taken  the  time  to  come 
in  at  all,  but  he  did  not  dare  come  to  town  and 
go  away  without  paying  his  respects  to  the 
Dean's  house.  Before  he  would  have  the  ex- 
planation finished  the  Dean  would  have  him  com- 
fortably seated,  but  still  protesting. 

This  formula  was  never  varied,  and  in  the 
years  it  had  come  almost  to  the  dignity  of  a 
ritual.  When  Father  Huetter  came  he  took  his 
part  in  the  ceremony  with  all  the  solemnity  of  an 
acolyte. 

If  the  Dean  met  Father  Lynch  on  the  street, 
as  sometimes  happened,  then  the  matter  was 
more  serious.  At  twenty  paces  distance  Father 
Lynch  broke  into  what  was  almost,  but  not  quite, 
a  run.  He  was  in  luck!  he  panted.  He  would 
not  have  to  go  all  the  way  up  to  the  house.  He 
would  not  have  had  time  to  make  it  anyway. 
Now  the  Dean  could  just  walk  on  down  to  the 
station  with  him  and  they  could  talk  on  the 
way. 

He  would  grasp  the  Dean's  hand  and  begin 
tugging  him  in  the  direction  of  the  station.  The 
Dean  would  stand  and  pull  as  firmly  the  other 
way.  Then  more  explanations  and  apologies. 
Father  Lynch  was  distressed.  He  was  sorry. 
But  he  must  make  that  train.  A  thousand 
things  depended  on  it!  In  the  end  the  Dean 
would  put  one  great  hand  under  the  smaller 


FATHER  LYNCH 'S  WISDOM    243 

man's  elbow  and  propel  him  bodily  up  the  street 
in  the  direction  of  the  deanery. 

It  is  of  record  that  Mrs.  Mary  Normile  was 
one  morning  chatting  in  a  neighbor's  kitchen, 
when  she  heard  an  uproar  in  her  own  house  across 
the  yard.  It  seems  that  the  Dean  had  been  pass- 
ing, and  seeing  the  door  open  had  walked  in 
through  the  house.  In  the  kitchen  he  came  upon 
Teresa  Normile,  aged  seven,  and  her  brother,  a 
year  younger,  going  through  a  grave  and  lifelike 
imitation  of  a  meeting  on  the  street  between 
Dean  Driscoll  and  Father  Lynch.  Seeing 
Father  Driscoll  in  the  doorway,  young  Terrence 
Normile  put  up  the  pipes  to  cry.  But  his  sister, 
a  quicker  and  better  judge  of  facial  expressions, 
looked  up  slyly,  finger  in  mouth,  at  the  Dean — 
and  grinned.  Confidence  being  thus  established, 
the  Dean  got  them  to  go  over  the  whole  perform- 
ance from  the  beginning.  He  had  the  satisfac- 
tion of  seeing  himself  mimicked  to  an  eyelash  by 
the  perfectly  respectful  and  painstaking  Teresa, 
while  Terrence  portrayed  Father  Lynch  with 
more  flourish  but  less  truth. 

His  roars  of  laughter  disturbed  Mrs.  Normile 
from  her  morning  chat.  As  she  came  running 
up  on  to  the  side  porch  the  children  bolted 
through  the  back  door.  The  Dean,  thus  basely 
deserted,  and  weak  from  laughing,  fled  incon- 
tinently through  the  front  door.  He  was  still 
laughing  when  he  reached  home.  But  he  would 
not  tell  Father  Huetter  the  tale.  Father  Huet- 


244        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

ter  went  out  that  afternoon  and  returned  with 
six  different  versions  of  the  matter. 

Father  Lynch  never  came  to  Milton  without 
some  ostensible  and  plausible  reason  of  business. 
But  his  real  business  on  these  visits  was  to  hear 
of  the  doings  of  the  Dean  during  the  month  past 
and  to  sit  in  chancery  upon  them.  Long  ago  he 
had  made  himself  censor  in  ordinary  to  the  Dean, 
as  regarded  the  things  of  this  world.  In  matters 
of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  in  the  realm  of  con- 
science, the  Dean  was  his  perfect  man,  walking 
with  God. 

But  in  his  dealings  with  men,  in  his  judgment 
of  motives  and  effects,  Father  Lynch  felt  that 
the  Dean  needed  supervision.  He  was  con- 
stantly being  imposed  upon.  He  saw  good  in 
all  men  and  all  things.  His  hand  and  heart 
were  open  to  the  flimsiest  and  most  barefaced 
tale  of  wandering  misfortune. 

It  is  all  well  for  him  to  be  a  saint- — Father 
Lynch  argued — and  walk  with  his  head  in 
Heaven.  But  where  would  he  be  these  twenty- 
five  years  without  me? 

"He  did  you  all  wrong,"  the  judge  repeated 
aggressively,  seeing  that  the  Dean  would  not  be 
drawn  out  to  argument.  "The  Governor  should 
never  have  given  Sargent  back  possession  of  his 
mill  or  removed  the  troops  from  it  until  Sargent 
had  given  a  bond  to  accept  and  keep  the  terms 
between  the  men  and  himself  which  the  Gov- 
ernor's board  of  arbitration  may  name." 


FATHER  LYNCH 'S  WISDOM    245 

"Oh,  that  was  not  needed,"  said  the  Dean 
easily.  "Sargent  is  glad  enough  to  get  his  mill 
back  at  any  terms.  He  is  bound  by  his  word, 
given  and  published,  to  do  whatever  his  man  and 
the  Governor's  man  and  the  representative  of 
the  strikers  agree  upon." 

"His  word!  you  say?" 

"No,"  said  the  Dean,  answering  the  sarcasm 
in  Father  Lynch's  tone,  "he  would  not  dare  face 
the  storm  of  public  condemnation  that  would  fall 
on  him  if  he  broke  his  word." 

"How  do  you  know  what  he  would  face? 
How  do  you  know  what  desperate  straits  he  was 
in  when  he  gave  in  to  the  Governor?  Why  did 
he  give  in?  You  do  not  know.  Neither  do  I. 
But  there  is  something  bad,  very  bad,  to  come  of 
it.  Mark  me.  That  man  has  a  bad  eye.  Did 
I  not  see  him  kick  the  little  man  in  the  street  ?" 

The  Dean  did  not  answer.  He  looked  specu- 
latively  and  a  little  anxiously  at  Father  Huetter; 
and  he  saw  that  his  young  assistant  was  im- 
pressed as  he  himself  was.  Father  Lynch  did 
not  purposely  look  for  the  bad  side  of  men  and 
things.  He  sometimes  saw  men  worse  than  they 
really  were;  but  not  often,  the  Dean  reflected 
sadly;  not  often. 

"The  Governor  has  gained  by  the  whole  busi- 
ness," Father  Lynch  went  on.  "He  has  come 
well  out  of  it  all.  He  drew  the  eyes  of  the  whole 
country  to  himself.  He  did  a  spectacular  and 
what  looked  like  a  daring  thing.  The  country  is 


246        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

ready  to  lov*e  a  man  who  does  things  like  that. 
He  has  put  himself  above  his  party  and  into  a 
place  where  he  cannot  be  ignored;  and  now  he 
is  safely  out  of  it  all.  He  need  not  worry  about 
the  final  outcome.  The  country  is  tired  hearing 
of  your  strike  by  now,  anyhow.  He  has  got  the 
advertising  and  the  reputation  out  of  it.  Now 
he  has  withdrawn  his  soldiers  and  his  people  and 
left  your  men  again  at  the  mercy  of  John  Sar- 
gent. 

"I  tell  you,  Dean,  you  did  a  great  thing  for 
Governor  Gordon  Fuller  when  you  put  him  on 
the  way  to  what  he  did." 

"I  did  not  do  it.  I  was  not  able,"  answered 
the  Dean,  shaking  his  head.  "John  Sargent 
himself,  by  his  insolence,  angered  the  Governor 
into  doing  what  I  could  not  persuade  him  to  do." 

"He  would  not  have  thought  of  it  if  you  had 
not  fired  his  imagination  and  his  ambition  with 
the  idea,  before  Sargent  got  to  him." 

"I  hope  that  you  are  not  altogether  right, 
Father  Patrick,"  said  the  Dean  slowly.  "I  like 
to  think  that  the  young  Governor  did  what  he 
has  done  because  he  thought  it  the  right  and  the 
brave  thing  to  do." 

"At  least,"  said  Father  Huetter,  coming  back 
to  the  charge,  "the  Governor  by  his  action 
proved  one  thing — a  thing  that  people  in  this 
country  had  begun  to  doubt.  He  proved  that 
the  Government  is  really  supreme  over  every  pri- 


FATHER  LYNCH 'S  WISDOM    247 

vate  interest  in  the  State.  He  has  shown  the 
way.  He  has  proved  that  government  has  the 
power  and  the  duty  to  interfere  in  economic  con- 
flicts such  as  this  and  to  force  a  fair  compromise. 

"He  has  knocked  on  the  head  the  superstition 
that  strikes,  battles  between  Capital  and  Labor, 
are  sacred  duels,  in  which  no  one  dare  interfere. 
Why,  from  the  attitude  of  this  country  during 
the  last  twenty-five  years,  an  outsider  would 
think  that  Labor  and  Capital  in  a  strike  were 
two  'bad  men'  meeting  in  a  frontier  town,  who 
must  be  allowed  to  shoot  their  fight  out  in  a 
crowded  street  no  matter  who  else  might  be 
hurt. 

"It  is  futile,"  the  young  priest  went  on,  "for 
us  to  complain  of  what  Capital  does.  And  La- 
bor will  always  fight  for  all  it  can  get.  Shall  we 
blame  it?  But,  we  support  a  government  that 
is  bound  to  be  able,  and  to  show  itself  able,  to 
hold  these  two  great  forces  in  line  and  make  them 
work  together  for  the  good  of  all. 

"Here  is  the  trouble.  Here  is  why  we  have 
unrest  and  suspicion  and  class  hatred  amongst 
us.  Here  is  where  social  revolution,  Socialism 
and  Anarchy,  make  head  among  us.  It  is  not 
because  Capital  is  greedy.  It  is  not  because  La- 
bor is  lawless.  It  is  because  many  people  be- 
lieve that  government,  as  we  have  it  constituted, 
is  incompetent  to  deal  with  its  problems. 

"Once  show  them  that  government  is  really 


248        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

able  to  do  things,  that  it  can  bring  the  worker 
and  the  employer  together  and  measure  justice 
to  both  of  them,  then  you  will  hear  no  more  of 
social  upheaval. 

"The  Governor  has  shown  that  this  can  be 
done.  He  has  moved  us  a  great  step  toward  the 
end  of  our  economic  struggle.  If  government 
can  do  this  thing,  then  it  can,  step  by  step,  bring 
about  every  social  and  economic  readjustment 
that  the  country  needs. 

"There  is  nothing  the  matter  with  the  country 
except  that  our  thought  and  our  actions  have 
been  numbered  by  certain  fetishes  and  hoary  su- 
perstitions about  sacred  rights.  The  Governor 
has  shown  that  these  can  be  dealt  with.  If  he 
has  gained  something  for  himself  out  of  it,  let 
him  have  it,  I  say." 

Father  Lynch  listened  calmly  to  the  end. 
Then  he  reached  forward  and,  shaking  a  solemn, 
warning  finger  at  the  Dean,  he  spoke  his  mind. 

"You  have  too  plagued  much  education 
around  this  house,  Dean:  I  always  said  it." 

The  Dean  chuckled.  Father  Huetter  threw 
out  his  hands  and  sat  down,  laughing  and  per- 
spiring. He  and  Father  Lynch  were  of  widely 
different  schools  and  different  times,  but  he  never 
made  the  mistake  of  underrating  the  value  of  the 
older  man's  shrewd  insight  into  men  and  things.1 

Having  thus  cleared  away  the  ground,  Father 
Lynch  proceeded  to  analyze  the  case  soberly 
and  slowly. 


FATHER  LYNCH' S  WISDOM    249 

"I  don't  like  it  at  all,  at  all,"  he  said.  "You 
young  men" — he  turned  to  Father  Huetter — 
"study  from  books  and  you  talk  and  think  from 
books,  mostly.  I — and  shame  for  me! — do  not 
read  all  I  ought. 

"You  are  taught  to  see  men  by  groups  or 
classes,  as  you  think  of  them.  You  believe  that 
certain  men,  having  certain  common  interests, 
work  and  act  together  on  certain  common  prin- 
ciples, for  a  common  good  at  the  end.  I  don't 
believe  it.  I  never  did. 

"You  think  of  two  men  as  two  molders,  or  two 
bookkeepers,  or  two  mill-owners;  and  you  think 
of  them  as  acting  alike  because  they  work  at 
the  same  things.  It  is  not  so.  They  are  not 
two  this  or  two  that.  Each  of  them  is  a  man. 
And  a  man  is  the  only  being  of  all  God's  crea- 
tion that  is  absolutely  alone.  He  has  no  in- 
stincts to  keep  him  acting  with  a  class  or  a  herd. 
He  does  what  he  does  by  himself  and  for  him- 
self; and  does  it  for  the  motive  that  lies  in  his 
heart  just  at  that  moment.  You  must  find  the 
motive  before  you  talk  of  what  he  does. 

"Find  me  John  Sargent's  motive.  Tell  me 
why  he  gave  in  to  the  Governor.  And  I  will  tell 
you  what  is  to  come  of  it." 

"Well,"  said  the  Dean  reflectively,  "he  must 
have  become  discouraged  and  convinced  that  he 
was  beaten.  I  do  not  wonder.  He  appeared 
here  one  morning  and  walked  up  to  the  mill.  A 
soldier  stopped  him  at  the  gate  of  his  own  mill 


250        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

and  would  not  let  him  enter.  He  walked  out, 
the  men  say,  into  the  middle  of  the  road  and 
stood,  almost  on  the  spot  where  Harry  Loyd 
died,  looking  up  and  down  at  the  mill  for  a 
long  time.  Then  he  turned  and  walked  back  to 
the  station.  He  did  not  speak  to  a  soul  in  the 
town. 

"I  think  he  knew  himself  for  a  beaten  man." 

"I  do  not,"  said  Father  Lynch  decisively. 
"A  thing  like  that  would  make  him  wild  with 
rage.  It  is  just  the  thing  that  would  not  let  him 
give  up.  He  expected  it  anyway.  No.  And 
you  are  not  telling  me  all,"  he  accused  the  Dean 
abruptly.  "Where  did  the  Governor  get  the 
money?" 

"That  is  a  mystery,"  the  Dean  admitted. 

"A  mystery?"  Father  Lynch  sat  up  and  eyed 
the  Dean  with  severity.  "Dean,"  he  said,  "you 
are  an  older  man  than  I.  Now  I  have  known 
money  to  go  mysteriously.  Mine  goes  that  way. 
Yours  does  not,  for  some  prodigal  son  is  always 
waiting  around  to  take  it  from  you  for  his  fare 
home,  before  you  really  know  that  you  have  it." 
(The  Dean's  failings  in  this  direction  were  a 
standing  grievance  to  Father  Lynch,  and  the  sub- 
ject of  many  a  monthly  review.) 

"But,  I  put  you  on  your  word  as  an  older 
man,"  Father  Lynch  went  on  sternly,  "did  you 
ever  know  money  to  come  that  way — mysteri- 
ously, out  of  nowhere?" 

"You  are  quite  right,  Father  Patrick,"  the 


FATHER  LYNCH 'S  WISDOM    251 

Dean  agreed.  "It  does  not  come  that  way. 
But  I  do  not  quite  see — ' 

"Two  weeks  ago,"  Father  Lynch  pursued  his 
argument,  regardless  of  what  the  Dean  saw  or 
did  not  see,  "on  the  first  pay-day,  I  am  told  that 
the  Governor  did  not  have  and  could  not  get 
money  to  pay  the  men.  I  am  also  told  that  on 
that  evening  you  did  incite  the  women  here 
to  redeem  his  worthless  pay-checks  by  force. 
From  a  man  of  peace,  Dean,"  he  observed  sadly, 
"you  are  falling  into  violence  in  your  old  days. 
But  I  do  not  believe  that  charge — so  I  will  take 
another  day  for  it. 

"Shortly  after  that,"  he  began  again  on  the 
main  case,  "it  appears  that  the  Governor  found 
money,  not  only  to  pay  the  men  but  also  to  buy 
materials.  And,  what  is  more,  he  found  a  mar- 
ket for  the  machines  that  were  being  turned  out. 

"Now,  according  to  your  arguments,  Father 
Huetter,  he  could  not  get  it  from  a  rich  man. 
No  rich  man  would  furnish  money  for  the  pur- 
pose of  beating  another  rich  man,  a  man  of  his 
own  class;  and  John  Sargent  is,  or  was,  a  rich 
man.  But,  I  submit  to  you,  learned  sir,  that  it 
was  more  money  than  a  poor  man,  with  a  decent 
respect  for  his  own  class,  would  have  about  him. 
And,  a  poor  man  would  not  be  able  to  open  mar- 
kets which  John  Sargent  had  closed  up  tight. 
I  think  it  must  have  been  a  rich  man.  If  I  am 
wrong,  I  hope  to  be  corrected,"  he  added  with 
beaming  urbanity. 


252        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"I  guess  you  are  safe,"  laughed  Father  Huet- 
ter. 

"Then  this  follows,"  said  Father  Lynch,  again 
assuming  his  magisterial  role,  "John  Sargent 
found  that  he  had  an  enemy ;  a  big  enemy,  a  rich 
enemy,  a  man  bigger  and  richer  than  himself. 
That  day  you  tell  of,  he  went  away  from  here  to 
fight  that  enemy." 

Father  Lynch  sat  back  and  folded  his  arms. 
He  had  spoken. 

"I  do  not  think  I  understand,"  said  the  Dean 
slowly.  Father  Lynch's  nimble  short  cuts  to  a 
conclusion  often  left  the  Dean  some  distance  be- 
hind. "He  has  given  up  the  fight." 

"You  were  never  more  mistaken  in  your  life, 
Dean.  He  has  not  given  up.  He  has  made  a 
truce  with  the  Governor  and  the  men,  because 
he  found  that  a  bigger  enemy — of  his  own  class 
— was  fighting  him  from  behind. 

"Now  you  tell  me,"  he  went  on,  "that  since  he 
agreed  to  accept  the  Governor's  terms  and  is  back 
running  the  mill  again  he  is  running  it  as  it  was 
never  run  before.  You  tell  me  that  he  is  to  run 
it  night  and  day,  that  he  will  soon  be  using  al- 
most double  the  force  that  he  used  before. 
What  is  he  trying  to  do?  Probably  he  will  try 
to  flood  the  market  with  machinery.  I  hear  it's 
none  too  good  now.  Maybe  that  other  man  will 
lose  money,  a  lot  of  it,  if  the  prices  of  machinery 
suddenly  fall. 

"When  he  gave  in  to  the  Governor  the  way 


FATHER  LYNCH' S  WISDOM    253 

he  did,  he  was  striking  at  his  whole  class,  as  you 
call  it.  Everjr  rich  man  says  now  he  is  a  traitor 
and  a  coward,  that  he  should  have  held  out. 

"Maybe,  he  has  found  that  he  has  no  class.  I 
am  not  sure." 

This  in  itself,  coming  from  Father  Lynch,  was 
a  statement  so  unusual  that  it  sounded  heretical. 
The  Dean  and  Father  Huetter  were  alarmed 
and  dumfounded.  When  he  leaned  forward, 
hesitating,  and  lost  in  a  patient  struggle  with  his 
judgments,  they  were  honestly  concerned.  But 
it  was  an  affair  so  beyond  the  memory  and  the 
ken  of  man  that  neither  had  any  suggestion  to 
offer. 

"You  that  live  in  crowded  towns,"  Father 
Lynch  began  finally,  with  an  evident  effort,  "you 
look  at  men  in  groups.  There  are  so  many 
around  you  that  you  cannot  study  the  individual. 
You  have  to  rank  them  into  classes.  And  you 
judge  them  and  their  actions  by  the  class  into 
which  you  put  them.  In  the  hills  it  is  different. 
There  we  have  time  to  see  what  is  in  the  face  of 
a  man,  before  another  comes  along. 

"Now  I  have  looked  into  the  eye  of  John  Sar- 
gent. I  said  he  had  a  bad  eye.  Maybe  I  would 
not  say  bad,  just.  But  there  is  a  mark  in  his 
eye  that  makes  him  dangerous.  It  is  the  mark 
of  revenge.  Other  passions  he  may  have,  I  do 
not  doubt.  But  the  one  ravaging  fury  of  that 
man's  heart  is  revenge. 

"From  his  grave,"  he  added  solemnly,  "that 


254        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

man  would  strike  back  for  revenge.     I  see  it  in 
his  eye." 

Father  Huetter  was  puzzled.  This  was  a 
Father  Lynch  that  he  had  never  before  seen. 

The  Dean,  however,  understood  better.  Still, 
he  was  not  able  to  agree  fully.  Guardedly  he 
protested: 

"You  might  well  be  right,  Father  Patrick. 
But  he  cannot  strike  anywhere  without  hurting 
himself,  in  money.  And  money  is  his  soul  and 
his  god.  It  may  be  that  revenge  is  the  strong- 
est slant  of  his  character.  I  would  not  doubt 
your  reading.  But  money  has  grown  into  his 
heart.  I  have  heard  that  man  rave  about  the 
loss  of  money,  frantically,  madly,  as  though  his 
life  blood  were  being  drawn.  No.  I  do  not 
think  that  any  passion  can  now  come  between  his 
heart  and  money.  He  cannot  strike.  He  is 
bound."  * 

"I  am  right,"  said  Father  Lynch,  unmoved. 
"You  shall  see  it." 

"I  do  not  know  why,"  said  the  Dean  absently, 
"but  I  always  feel  strangely  about  that  man.' 

His  face  was  turned  to  the  window.  The 
sharp,  piercing  look  of  his  strong  old  eyes  soft- 
ened to  a  deep,  gentle  radiance  of  wonder  and 
faith  unbounded.  The  light  in  them  was  the 
light  of  his  Vision  above  the  gray  line  of  the  hills, 
the  light  of  the  Promise,  of  Infinite  Peace. 

"Strong,  ruthless,  cruel!"  he  said  in  a  whis- 


FATHER  LYNCH 'S  WISDOM    255 

per.  "He  has  been  all  these,  coining  the  lives 
of  men  and  women  and  children.  Uncounted 
wrongs  lie  at  his  door.  He  has  walked  rough- 
shod on  a  suffering  people. 

"But,  I  know  little  children  that  are  taught  to 
pray  to  God  for  John  Sargent,  that  He  will 
change  him  and  make  him  better  to  them  and 
theirs.  And  where  men  and  women  have  suf- 
fered was  not  every  pain  of  theirs  a  prayer  to 
God  to  change  John  Sargent? 

"This  is  still  God  Almighty's  world. 

"I  believe!  I  believe  that  He  will  not  take 
John  Sargent  from  it  without  first  wringing 
from  him  some  great  good!" 

Father  Lynch  sat  silent  and  bowed.  His 
jurisdiction  over  the  Dean  was  ended  when  the 
latter  came  to  the  things  of  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven. 

In  the  silence,  Father  Huetter  rose  and 
slipped  from  the  room  upon  some  errand  of  the 
day's  work. 

The  Dean  turned  slowly  back  from  the  win- 
dow. When  he  spoke,  the  exaltation  had  gone 
from  his  tone.  His  voice  and  his  eyes  were 
those  of  an  old  man,  tired  and  shaken. 

"God  gives  me  strength.  He  gives  me  the 
light  of  faith.  And  yet  I  am  troubled  and  sick 
of  heart.  Patrick — I — am  I  a  faithless  man, 
that  I  cannot  hold  up  my  heart  and  believe  al- 
ways?" 


256        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

The  anguish  in  the  old  Dean's  voice  brought 
Father  Lynch  to  his  feet  on  the  instant.  Never 
before,  in  all  the  years,  had  he  known  his  friend 
to  falter. 

'Tis  nothing,  Dean.  'Tis  nothing,"  he  has- 
tened to  explain.  "You  have  been  wearing 
yourself  out  these  weeks  past,  without  rest.  I'll 
warrant  you've  been  sitting  up  half  these  nights, 
and  not  tasting  your  food,  too,"  he  scolded. 
"You  are  tired  now,  and  your  head  is  heavy. 
'Twill  pass,  'twill  pass." 

Solicitous  and  full  of  comfort,  Father  Lynch 
bustled  about  the  room,  now  pushing  a  chair  into 
its  exact  place,  now  straightening  a  book,  now 
stopping  to  fleck  off  a  speck  of  dust  from  the 
table.  The  Dean  watched  these  tactics  of  his 
friend  and  a  smile  of  grateful  understanding 
came  stealing  over  his  face.  When  he  saw 
Father  Lynch  beginning  a  second  time  at  the 
chairs,  he  said: 

"That  will  do,  Patrick,  and— thank  you.  The 
chairs  needed  it;  and  so  did  I." 

Father  Lynch  understood.  His  friend's 
cloud  had  lifted,  suddenly,  as  it  had  fallen.  He 
sat  down  in  confusion,  and  very  deliberately  ex- 
amined his  watch. 

"You  have  time  yet,"  said  the  Dean.  "You 
did  not  say  all  that  was  in  your  mind — about 
Sargent  and  the  future.  I  would  hear  all." 

"What  need  have  you  to  listen  to  my 
blatherings?"  Father  Lynch  was  eager  to  dis- 


credit  himself.  The  business  of  a  prophet  of 
evil  is  a  thankless  one  in  the  end ;  and  he  did  not 
propose  to  take  it  up  again. 

But  the  Dean  insisted: 

"You  said  some  things  that  were  too  true  to 
be  passed  over.  Tell  me  what  you  think." 

Thus  adjured,  Father  Lynch  saw  that  there 
was  no  escape.  But  he  did  not  now  resume  the 
chair  of  judge.  He  spoke  very  slowly  and  with 
a  manner  of  cautious  and  hesitating  diffidence. 

"I  hope  I  am  wrong,  Dean.  I  ought  to  be 
wrong.  But  I  think  John  Sargent  now  feels 
that  he  has  scores  to  settle  with  many  people. 
The  men  have  fought  him  to  a  bitter  end.  He 
feels  that  he  has  fed  and  clothed  them  for  years 
and  that,  when  they  thought  themselves  able, 
they  tried  to  ruin  him.  Jim  Loyd  fought  him 
most  of  all,  and  he  will  try  to  convict  him  and 
give  him  a  State's  prison  term. 

"The  Governor,  he  thinks,  took  an  unfair  and 
unlawful  advantage  of  him — for  political  capi- 
tal— at  a  time  when  he  was  already  in  grave 
trouble. 

"What  will  he  do?  He  will — as  he  is  now  do- 
ing— rush  through  all  the  machinery  possible,  to 
get  money  and  to  strike  at  the  secret  enemy  who 
furnished  the  Governor  with  money  against  him. 
He  will  fight  that  enemy  first.  Then,  when  he 
has  breathing  space,  he  will  turn  upon  the  Gov- 
ernor. He  will  snap  his  finger  at  his  board  of 
arbitration.  It  will  be  the  dead  of  winter  by 


258        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

then.  The  men  will  not  dare  to  strike  again. 
He  will  leave  the  Governor  looking  foolish  and 
ridiculous  in  the  eyes  of  the  State  and  country. 

"You  say  he  is  bringing  in  hundreds  of  new 
men  and  breaking  them  in,"  he  went  on.  "He 
will  have  more  than  he  needs.  Who  is  to  pre- 
vent him  from  discharging  his  old  men  by  the 
wholesale  ? 

"He  is  not  convinced.  He  is  not  beaten.  He 
will  mark  time  till  winter  is  down  upon  you. 
Winter  is  his  friend — the  only  one  he  counts 
upon. 

"Meantime  he  will  use  every  ounce  of  his 
power  to  put  Loyd  away  permanently. 

"And,  Dean,"  he  concluded,  dropping  his 
voice,  "remember  this:  that  man  hates  you  and 
blames  you.  He  cannot  hurt  you.  But  he  will 

try." 

"Dear  God!  I  would  do  the  man  every  good 
in  my  power!" 

"True,"  Father  Lynch  admitted.  "As  I  said 
before,  a  man  is  a  creature  altogether  alone  and 
by  himself.  No  other  man  can  tell  what  one 
thinks  and  feels.  It  may  be  that  the  very  fact 
that  he  knows  you  once  saved  his  life — I  saw  it — 
and  that  he  knows  you  would  do  him  good  is 
the  very  thing  that  he  holds  hardest  against  you. 

"The  heart  of  a  man,"  he  concluded,  "goes  in 
a  queer  and  unbelievable  way,  when  once  it  is 
set  toward  the  wrong." 

He  rose  briskly,  watch  in  hand. 


FATHER  LYNCH' S  WISDOM    259 

"I  must  be  gone.  There's  a  new  conductor  on 
Number  Seven  and  he  thinks  he  must  leave  Mil- 
ton on  time,  no  matter  what  time  he  gets  us 
home.  Joe  Conley,  that's  gone,  always  gave  us 
fifteen  or  twenty  extra  minutes  here,  and  made 
up  the  time  on  the  curves.  What  matter  if  he 
did  put  us  into  the  ditch  once  in  the  year  or  so?" 

"Oh,  you'll  have  plenty  of  time,"  said  the 
Dean,  rising  slowly  and  stiffly.  "I'll  walk  with 
you  to  the  station." 

"On  my  word!  I  believe  you're  afraid  I'd 
take  up  a  collection  on  the  way  if  you  let  me 
walk  to  the  station  alone." 

The  joke  was  venerable  with  twenty-five 
years'  usage  between  them.  But  the  Dean 
laughed  boyishly  and  explained  that  there  was 
supper  in  the  house  for  only  two,  so  that  it  was 
policy  for  him  to  see  that  Father  Lynch  did  ac- 
tually get  aboard  his  train. 

The  Dean  shook  hands  with  his  guest  at  the 
step  of  the  train,  as  Number  Seven,  on  time,  was 
moving  away  from  the  platform.  He  walked 
away  from  the  station  with  a  slow  step,  giving 
only  a  mechanical  return  to  the  people  who  sa- 
luted him  by  the  way. 

All  day  he  had  been  feeling  rather  depressed, 
and  Father  Lynch's  talk  had  done  much  to 
deepen  the  feeling. 

Where  he  had  been  counting  upon  a  lasting 
solution  of  all  the  difficulties  which  for  years  had 
threatened  the  peace  and  happiness  of  his  peo- 


260        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

pie.  he  now  saw  that  nothing  had  really  been 
solved.  Where  he  had  seen  a  prosperous  and 
industrious  winter  before  them,  he  now  realized 
that  they  were  more  fully  and  helplessly  at  the 
mercy  of  John  Sargent  than  they  had  ever 
been. 

Lost  in  thought,  he  turned  into  Lake  Street 
and  then  down  Reynold  Street.  So  that  before 
he  noticed  it  he  was  standing  at  the  door  of  the 
low  red  building  where  Jim  Loyd  was  in  jail. 

Fred  Wheeler,  the  warden,  admitted  him. 

"Loyd?  Why,  of  course  you  can  see  him, 
Father.  Only,  Mr.  Sargent  is  in  there,  in  the 
office,  with  him  now." 

"Sargent?    Here?     To  see  Jimmie  Loyd?" 

"Funny  thing,  ain't  it,  Father?  He's  been 
here  before.  And  it  ain't  a  guilty  conscience, 
either.  He  ain't  troubled  that  way.  I  dunno — 
Loyd  seems  to  have  some  kind  of  a  fascination 
over  that  man.  Sargent  can't  leave  him  alone." 

"I  would  like  to  go  in  while  he's  there,"  said 
the  Dean.  "See  if  he  has  any  objection,  Fred." 

In  a  moment  Wheeler  returned,  to  say  that 
the  Dean  might  go  into  the  inner  office. 

Loyd  rose  from  the  table  and  greeted  the 
Dean  quietly.  Sargent  was  walking  about  the 
room.  He  wheeled  sharply  as  the  old  priest 
came  in,  and  for  an  instant  the  two  looked  curi- 
ously at  each  other. 

"I  would  not  intrude,"  said  the  Dean  quickly, 
realizing  that  it  was  a  strange  and  strained  mo- 


FATHER  LYNCH' S  WISDOM   261 

ment.  "I  have  no  business  here  that  could  not 
wait." 

"It  does  not  matter,"  said  Sargent  shortly. 
"I  am  trying  to  make  this  man  do  something  for 
his  own  good.  But  it  doesn't  seem  to  be  any  use. 
I  am  telling  him  that  I  will  have  this  whole  case 
against  him  dropped,  if  he  will  give  his  word  to 
leave  Milton  then  and  never  come  back." 

The  Dean  thought  rapidly,  and  decided  upon 
a  frontal  attack. 

"Aside  from  the  fact,"  he  said,  "that  he  is  not 
guilty,  and  that  you,  Mr.  Sargent,  know  too  well 
who  is  guilty,  how  do  you  know  that  he  would 
keep  his  word?" 

"Of  course  he'd  keep  his  word.  He  always 
does.  You  told  me  that." 

The  Dean  started.  That  terrible  night,  when 
he  had  told  Sargent  Jim  Loyd  pays  his  debts, 
came  crowding  back  upon  him.  But  he  drove 
it  back,  and  went  on  to  his  purpose. 

"Will  you  keep  your  word — to  the  Governor?" 

Sargent  was  stunned.  For  an  instant  a 
numbing  superstition  caught  him.  How  did  this 
man  know  the  plans  of  his  mind  before  he  him- 
self had  them  formed?  Then  all  the  baffled  rage 
of  months  of  humiliation  and  defeat  broke  out. 

"Who  are  you?"  he  shouted,  striding  across 
the  room.  "What  are  you,  that  you  can  pick 
the  meat  out  of  my  brains?  Everywhere  I  go, 
you  meet  me.  Every  move  I  make,  you  are 
ahead  of  me  to  block  it!" 


262        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

The  Dean  leaned  against  the  edge  of  the  table, 
looking  calmly  down  at  the  man  in  front  of  him. 
This  coolness  seemed  to  drive  Sargent  from  his 
last  hold  of  self-control. 

"NoP  he  fairly  screamed.  "I  will  not  keep 
my  word  to  the  Governor!  I  will  never  again 
keep  word  or  faith  with  any  living  man! 

"I  thought  I  was  a  man,"  he  began  again, 
"living  among  men,  working  among  men.  I 
thought  I  lived  and  worked  among  men  who 
worked  and  fought  for  the  same  things  that  I 
worked  and  fought  for.  I  thought  I  belonged 
to  a  class — gentlemen,  we  called  ourselves — that 
had  interests  in  common.  I  thought  we  were 
working  for  common  protection,  for  the  country, 
for  prosperity,  for  civilization. 

"It's  rot!     It's  all  a  lie! 

"There  is  no  country.  There  is  no  civiliza- 
tion. I  am  as  much  alone  now  as  if  I  was  back 
in  the  first  forest,  with  a  stone  club,  stalking  my 
first  beast.  I  have  been  a  triple-ringed  idiot, 
and  I  have  just  found  it  out. 

"I  will  go  my  own  way  from  now.  Why 
should  I  have  pity  or  faith,  or  thought  for  any 
man?  I  will  lie.  I  will  trick  and  throw  every 
man  that  has  put  a  hand  against  me. 

"I  thought  I  had  friends,  men  of  what  I  called 
my  own  kind,  who  were  with  me  in  a  fair  fight. 
I  could  have  fought  you  all,  Governor  and  all. 
But  those  men,  my  own  kind,  came  behind  me 
to  assassinate  me. 


FATHER  LYNCH 'S  WISDOM    263 

"I  will  beat  them  first.  I  will  run  that  mill 
till  it  groans,  till  the  machines  fly  to  pieces,  to 
beat  them. 

"I  have  tricked  the  Governor  now,  and  when 
it  is  time  I  will  laugh  in  his  face — and  make  the 
country  laugh  at  him. 

"Then  I  will  come  here.  Milton  is  my  town. 
I  will  drive  from  it  every  man  who  has  fought 
me.  Loyd,  here,  will  go  and  all  the  rest. 

"But  you,  you  will  be  the  first.  I  swear  it! 
You,  with  your  preaching  of  peace  and  patience, 
you  will  be  the  first!" 

"As  God  wills,"  answered  the  Dean  quietly. 
"But  you,  Mr.  Sargent,  you  should  not  excite 
yourself  so." 

"Are  you  taunting  me  with  that  again?  Are 
you?  Yes,  I  am  going  to  die.  Are  you  trying 
to  shake  your  red  rag  of  Hell-fire  at  me?  Are 
you  trying  to  scare  me  with  that?" 

"It  was  the  last  thing  in  my  thought,  Mr.  Sar- 
gent. Nevertheless— 

"Where  would  this  man  Loyd  be  to-day,  if  you 
had  not  stopped  him?  Where  would  this  whole 
strike  have  been  months  ago,  if  they  had  not  had 
you  to  preach  wisdom  and  patience  and  endur- 
ance to  them?  I  could  have  harried  them  into 
rioting  and  madness  and  then  have  crushed  them 
like  an  eggshell.  But  there  you  were,  preaching 
peace  and  everlasting,  gray  cunning  to  them. 

"And  why  do  you  do  it?  Because  you  think 
to  drive  your  Church  in  as  a  wedge,  a  wedge  be- 


264        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

tween  Anarchy  and  all  the  tearing  forces  below 
and  Capitalism  and  all  the  grinding  powers 
above- — to  save  the  country  that  way. 

"Country  or  no  country,  you  have  been  my 
strongest  enemy.  You  will  be  the  first  to  go. 
I  will—" 

For  an  instant  the  old  priest  had  taken  his  eyes 
from  Sargent  while  he  ranted. 

The  other  man  was  stealing  round  the  corner 
of  the  table  toward  Sargent.  Furtive  of  eye, 
hairy  of  face,  he  moved  with  the  strained,  vibra- 
ting stealth  of  a  gaunt  panther  preparing  to  leap. 

Dear  God!  Could  that  be  Jimmie  Loyd? 
Could  a  few  weeks  of  jail  have  done  that  to  him? 
Not  so  would  the  Jimmie  Loyd  whom  he  had 
known  go  to  his  enemy ! 

Even  in  his  horror,  the  Dean  acted  swiftly. 
He  grasped  Sargent  by  the  arm  and  swung  him 
round,  so  that  his  own  wide  body  was  between 
the  two  men.  Then,  with  a  grip  that  told  of  the 
giant  strength  of  his  younger  days,  he  almost 
lifted  his  man  to  the  door,  and,  opening  it,  pushed 
him  through;  saying  but  one  word: 

"Go!" 

With  his  back  against  the  door,  the  Dean 
looked  at  Loyd.  He  had  dropped  back  loosely 
into  his  chair,  and  his  head  fell  inert  on  his  chest. 
The  Dean  crossed  the  room  and  laid  a  hand  on 
Loyd's  shoulder. 

"Jimmie,"  he  said,  "I  have  seen  sorrow;  and 
you  have  lain  with  sorrow.  But,  of  all  the  men 


FATHER  LYNCH 'S  WISDOM    265 

that  I  have  ever  known,  that  man  just  gone  needs 
pity  most.  Think,  think  a  while,  and  you  will 
see." 

Loyd  answered  not  at  all,  but  reached  up  and 
took  the  hand  on  his  shoulder  in  a  grasp  that 
would  have  crushed  any  other  hand. 

"Can  he  hurt  you,  Father?"  he  asked  pres- 
ently. "Because,  if  he  can,  I  will  go,  or  do  any- 
thing he- 

"Jimmie,"  the  Dean  interrupted,  "have  you 
listened  to  me  all  these  years  and  do  not  know 
that  no  man  can  hurt  you  or  me?  If  we  do 
wrong  or  do  foolishly,  then  we  can  be  hurt,  not 
otherwise." 

Then  Wheeler  came  in. 

Father  Huetter,  supper,  and  a  long-suffering 
housekeeper  were  all  waiting  for  the  Dean  when 
he  came  home. 

As  he  walked  in  to  the  waiting  table,  he 
avoided  the  accusing  eye  of  the  housekeeper  and 
hastened  to  create  a  diversion. 

"Did  you  ever  wonder,  Father  Huetter,"  he 
said  blandly,  as  though  he  had  never  in  his  life 
kept  a  meal  waiting,  "where  Father  Lynch  goes 
to  school  for  his  uncommon  knowledge  of  men 
and  their  hearts?" 

The  housekeeper,  feeling  herself  outgeneraled, 
retired  scornfully. 

Father  Huetter,  while  he  smiled  at  the  un- 
spoken duel,  answered: 


266        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"Well,  they  say  he  only  reads  one  book  outside 
of  Mass  and  Office.  But  that  book  is  the  Douay 
Bible.  I  believe  he  knows  the  half  of  it  by 
heart." 

"Yes,  I  guess  that  is  the  answer,"  agreed  the 
Dean.  "No  new  thing  has  happened  to  a  human 
heart  since  that  Book  was  written." 


CHAPTER  XI 
"FUEL  OF  THE  FIRE" 

4  'HPnE  man  has  gone  rank,  raving  mad,  Dean; 
*•  there  is  no  other  explanation,"  said  Father 
Huetter. 

"It  must  be  very  bad,"  agreed  the  Dean, 
"from  all  I  hear." 

"Bad?  Why,  do  you  know,  he's  actually  driv- 
ing that  mill  up  to  nearly  two  hundred  per  cent, 
of  its  capacity.  Finnegan  and  Dryden  both  told 
me  that — and  they  are  men  who  know.  He  is 
driving  so  that  the  very  main  shaft  of  the  mill  is 
shaking  in  its  blocks. 

"He  has  had  a  cot  set  up  in  his  private  office 
and  he  eats  and  lives  there,  but  he  does  not  sleep 
anywhere.  They  say  he  is  out  through  the  mill 
night  and  day,  rushing  here  and  there,  and  driv- 
ing, driving,  driving  like  a  demon,  to  get  the  last 
ounce  of  power  out  of  the  machines,  the  last 
minute  of  work  and  endurance  out  of  the  men." 

"I  have  not  been  near  the  mill  since  the  night 
when  young  Harry  Loyd  was  killed,"  said  the 
Dean.  "I  could  not  bear  the  sight  of  it." 

"ISTo.  And  we  cannot  do  the  slightest  good. 
That  is  the  pitiful  part  of  it.  Even  the  things 
that  you  have  done,  the  men  did  not  always  un- 

267 


268        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

derstand  them  or  know  how  to  take  them.  And 
Sargent  thinks  that  every  move  you  have  made 
has  been  made  as  a  direct  attack  upon  him." 

"From  my  heart,"  the  Dean  returned,  "I  am 
sorry  for  that  man.  He  has  the  threat  of  death 
upon  him  and  there  is  a  canker  in  his  soul  that 
eats  and  eats,  and  drives  him  on  faster  and  faster 
toward  the  end.  God  alone  knows  what  the  end 
will  be :  madness  or  death,  or  the  two  together. 

"In  this  room,  on  that  night  I  spoke  of,  I  re- 
minded John  Sargent  of  Cain.  Within  an  hour 
from  that,  he  heard  the  cry  that  Cain  echoed  to 
God.  'Every  man  that  should  see  him  would 
kill  him.'  And — for  the  first  time  in  his  life,  I 
believe- — he  was  afraid. 

"From  that  time  his  heart  has  been  able  to  see 
nothing  but  'every  man's  hand  against  him.'  It 
is  not  an  excuse.  There  is  no  question  of  excuse. 
But  think,  Father.  Think  of  a  soul  turned  Loose 
against  the  world,  like  that!  Think  of  a  soul 
that  knows  not  God  at  all,  and  knows  men  only 
as  enemies!  Think  of  the  best  and  wisest  man 
you  ever  knew.  Take  from  him  his  God.  Then 
take  from  him  his  faith  and  trust  in  all  other  men. 
What  would  he  do?  Can  you  tell  to  what  bad 
and  cruel  lengths  he  would  go?" 

"But  this  man  is  a  criminal  lunatic,"  said 
Father  Huetter.  "The  men  are  getting  to  be 
superstitious.  Even  the  hardest  rushers  among 
the  piece  workers,  though  they  are  being  made 
to  earn  more  just  now  than  ever  before  in  their 


"FUEL  OF  THE  FIRE"          269 

lives— men  who  were  always  complaining  that 
the  machines  ran  too  slow — they  are  getting 
afraid  of  him.  It  is  simply  frightful.  He  has 
crowded  men,  new  and  old,  trained  and  green, 
into  that  great  blast-room  until  it  is  nothing  but 
a  pit  of  flaming  life-traps.  Men  are  working 
there  knee  to  knee  and  shoulder  to  shoulder,  un- 
der a  terrible  pressure  of  hurry,  with  only  inches 
between  them  and  death  in  the  gears,  with  only  a 
single  step  between  them  and  most  horrible  death 
in  molten  iron. 

"And  he  has  crowded  new  girls  and  new  wind- 
ers into  the  twine  mill  so  closely  that  the  timid 
ones  among  the  women  go  almost  mad  from 
standing  hours  and  hours  in  a  single  cramped  po- 
sition, not  daring  to  move.  While  the  heedless 
ones  take  terrible  chances  every  minute,  for  the 
sake  of  a  little  ease. 

"It's  so  bad  that  every  operating  job  in  that 
mill  to-day  is  a  criminal  risk.  I  tell  you  it's  a 
frightful  thing  that  a  man  like  him — he's  crim- 
inally insane,  nothing  short  of  it — should  ever 
have  such  power  over  men  and  women!" 

"It  is,"  the  Dean  agreed  sadly.  "No  doubt,  it 
is  a  terrible  thing  that  any  man  should  have  such 
a  measure  of  power  over  his  fellow-men.  It  has 
been  said  that  no  man  is  good  enough  and  wise 
enough  to  govern  another  man.  And  all  human 
records  seem  to  bear  out  the  statement. 

"Do  you  remember,  Father,  that  in  all  the 
struggles  of  men  for  liberty  they  have  never 


270        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

asked  for  any  positive  thing,  always  a  negative 
thing.  When  they  have  fought  and  died  for 
charities  and  constitutions  and  laws,  they  were 
never  wanting  to  strengthen  the  existing  power. 
They  were  always  seeking  to  curb  it,  to  bind  it, 
to  protect  themselves  against  it.  Men  seem  to 
have  agreed  always  that  no  power,  no  man,  no  set 
or  succession  of  men,  would  ever  be  wise  and 
good  enough  to  govern  absolutely. 

"All  this  regarded  political  power  only.  How 
much  less,  then,  is  any  man,  however  sane  and 
wise,  to  be  trusted  with  the  power  of  bread  and 
life  over  men?  That  is  the  power  which  John 
Sargent  wields  here.  I  suppose  no  man  is  fit  to 
have  such  power. 

"And  yet,"  he  concluded  slowly,  "dependence, 
to  some  extent  at  least,  is  the  lot  of  more  than 
nine-tenths  of  all  men.  Nearly  every  man  liv- 
ing is  in  some  way  dependent  on  another  man." 

"But  it  should  not  be  so:  it  need  not  be  so," 
said  Father  Huetter.  "There  is  nothing  inher- 
ent in  human  nature  that  would  make  it  so. 
God  never  meant  it  to  be  so,  for  He  puts  men 
into  the  world  practically  equal.  The  individual 
differences  of  heredity  and  environment  are 
really  trifling  in  the  long  run.  Every  day  we 
see  men  climb  swiftly  over  them." 

"They  do  climb  over  them,"  said  the  Dean; 
"and  it  is  that  one  fact,  I  believe,  that  holds 
our  American  industrial  system  together.  Our 
workingmen,  with  the  temper  they  have,  would 


"FUEL  OF  THE  FIRE"          271 

not  go  on  working  as  they  do  under  our  condi- 
tions if  each  one  did  not  in  his  heart  believe  that 
he  can  someway,  somehow,  climb  out  of  the  place 
he  is  in.  That  hope  is  the  mainspring  of  Ameri- 
can action.  By  it  our  civilization  keeps  running 
on." 

''But  the  hope  is  false,  and  a  delusion!"  cried 
Father  Huetter.  "What  chance  have  they? 
What  chance  have  our  men  here  in  Milton  of 
ever  being  anything  but  what  they  are?  This 
country  may  once  have  been  the  land  of  individ- 
ual opportunity;  but  that  was  a  time  when  the 
unopened  resources  of  the  land  lay  free  to  all. 
It  was  before  organized  capital  had  spread  its 
smothering  blanket  over  the  country  to  choke  the 
breath  of  individual  independence.  Our  people 
do  not  know  it,  but  they  are  rapidly  and  surely 
being  molded  into  classes  where  they  will  have 
to  stay,  as  fixed  as  are  the  peasant  and  working 
classes  of  Europe.  Their  hope  of  rising  out  of 
their  place  is  no  longer  a  hope.  It  is  an  outworn 
American  tradition.  Our  people  will  one  day 
awaken  to  this,  and  their  awakening  will  be  a  ter- 
rible one." 

"True  or  false,"  said  the  Dean,  "it  will  take 
many  lessons  to  make  our  people  believe  that 
hard  work  and  thrift  and  good  sense  will  not  get 
them  what  they  want.  And  if  they  cannot  get  it 
for  themselves  they  will  still  believe  that  they  can 
procure  what  they  want  for  their  children.  And 
that  is,  after  all,  the  biggest  thing  in  their  hearts. 


I 

272        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"And  they  are  not  so  deluded  as  you  might 
think.  Every  man,  like  every  woman,  has  one 
secret  thing  in  his  heart  that  he  wants  above  all 
other  things.  If  he  gets  that  thing,  you  will  not 
find  him  worrying  about  whether  he  belongs  to 
a  class  or  does  not.  He  will  not  care.  For 
when  he  gets  the  one  thing  on  which  his  heart  is 
set,  he  knows  that  he  belongs  to  the  class  of  the 
kings  of  the  earth — the  men  who  have  made  their 
heart's  dream  come  true. 

"And  they  get  the  secret  big  wish  of  their 
hearts  oftener  than  you  would  think.  For  you 
can  never  tell  what  it  may  be. 

"Do  you  know  Dennis  O'Leary?  You  do,  of 
course.  Now,  for  thirty  years  Dennis  has  stood 
day  in  and  day  out  down  in  the  lowest  wheelpit 
of  John  Sargent's  mill,  half  to  his  waist  in  water. 
In  summer  the  water  is  warm.  In  winter  it  is 
ice  cold.  So  far  as  Dennis  O'Leary  knows,  or 
cares,  those  are  the  only  changes  in  the  Labor 
situation  in  this  country. 

"Twenty-five  years  ago,"  he  went  on,  "the 
night  young  Aloysius  O'Leary  was  born,  Dennis 
O'Leary  decided  that  he  would  one  day  be  able 
to  walk  down  State  Street  and  see  the  words 
Aloysius  O'Leary,  Attorney  at  Law,  on  an  office 
sign.  For  all  those  years,  until  last  summer,  he 
looked  down  into  the  water  as  it  boiled  away 
from  the  tail  of  the  wheel  and  saw  nothing  but 
those  words.  Every  freezing  that  he  got  in  the 


"FUEL  OF  THE  FIRE"          273 

water,  every  twinge  of  the  rheumatism  that  has 
crimped  his  legs  and  bent  his  spine,  went  into  the 
making  of  that  sign  that  you  know  is  up  now  on 
State  Street. 

"Now  he  walks  eight  blocks  out  of  his  way 
after  the  late  Mass  on  Sunday,  and  makes  him- 
self late  for  his  dinner,  to  pass  by  and  read  the 
letters  on  that  sign.  He  wishes  they  were  seven 
feet  tall. 

"Then  he  goes  home  to  his  dinner.  And  if 
the  young  Attorney  dares  to  assume  any  airs,  the 
old  man  tells  him,  "Twere  fitter  for  you  to  be 
earnin'  an  honest  livin'  like  your  betters.' 

"But,  I  say,  Dennis  O'Leary  is  one  of  the 
kings  of  the  earth.  You  have  to  make  way  for 
him — a  man  who  has  made  his  dream  come  true ! 

"You  could  tell  him  that  the  country  is  fast 
going  to  the  dogs — and  he  would  agree  with  you. 
You  might  tell  him  that  it  is  foolish  for  a  man  to 
work  hard  and  honestly  when  so  many  rogues  get 
the  best  of  everything — and  he  would  say  you 
were  right.  But  you  cannot  tell  him  that  a  man 
cannot  get  what  he  wants  in  this  country  if  he  is 
willing  to  fight  away  and  work  for  it. 

"There  are  thousands,  millions  I  might  say,  of 
Dennis  O'Learys  among  our  working  people. 
Their  lives  hold  just  one,  big  longing  for  a  cer- 
tain thing.  Give  them  that  or  let  them  see  their 
way  to  it  and  they  care  little  about  what  class 
they  belong  to. 


274        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"Socialism  or  any  other  'ism'  may  cry  out  to 
them  to  work  and  vote  and  fight  as  a  class— the 
working  class.  But  they  will  never  do  it.  They 
have  no  class.  They  refuse  to  be  conscious  of 
any  class.  They  are  willing  to  work  to  the  bone 
for  just  their  one  big  thing.  Getting  that,  they 
count  their  lives  well  spent.  Failing  that,  their 
lives  are  empty.  They  carry  their  disappoint- 
ment to  the  grave. 

"But  they  do  not  succeed  or  fail  as  a  class. 
They  are  not  happy  or  unhappy  as  a  class. 
They  are  too  sturdy,  too  individual,  to  ever  live 
or  think  or  act  as  a  class. 

"That  is  why  Socialism,  the  Social  Revolution, 
will  never  be  able  to  array  them  as  a  class  against 
the  order  of  things. 

"Maybe  it  is  a  weakness  in  them,  collectively; 
but  it  is  their  character.  It  is  what  their  blood 
and  America,  together,  make  them.  They  stand 
or  fall  by  it." 

"That  is  the  thoughtless  and  heartless  Ameri- 
can blunder!"  said  the  young  priest  warmly. 

"Look  at  our  working  people  as  they  are  to- 
day! Ninety-nine  men  out  of  every  hundred 
have  to  go  on  working  with  their  hands  from 
youth  to  death!  Ninety-five  boys  out  of  every 
hundred  have  to  leave  school  and  start  over  the 
road  that  their  fathers  have  gone !  And  yet,  just 
because  one  strong  man  or  five  lucky  boys  get  a 
chance  for  something  easier,  the  whole  ninety- 


"FUEL  OF  THE  FIRE"          275 

nine  go  on  believing  that  there  is  a  chance  for 
them  and  theirs.  It  is  pitiful!  It  is  a  ghastly 
farce  and  a  delusion ! 

"They  will  not  act  or  work  for  themselves,  for 
their  kind,  because  every  one  of  them  is  secretly 
hugging  to  his  heart  the  slim  hope  that  he  may 
be  the  one  out  of  a  hundred  that  shall  climb  away 
from  his  fellows. 

"That  fallacy,  that  delusion,  is  the  one  thing 
that  is  holding  back  the  Social  Revolution.  All 
that  Socialism  needs  to-day  is  a  leader  great 
enough  and  honest  enough  to  really  awaken  these 
men  from  their  dream.  When  they  awake,  re- 
ligion and  in  particular  the  Catholic  Church  will 
be  the  first  thing  to  suffer.  They  will  look  back 
at  us  to  say :  'You  knew  we  were  deluding  our- 
selves ;  you  knew  we  had  no  chance ;  yet  you  went 
on  preaching  thrift  and  ambition,  patience  and 
endurance  to  us.  Why  did  you  do  it?' 

"Three  thousand  men  worked  all  day  to-day 
for  John  Sargent.  Two  thousand  more  are 
working  all  night  to-night.  How  many  of  them 
will  ever  be  anything  but  what  they  are?  How 
many  of  them  will  ever  have  anything  but  what 
they  have?  Yet  every  one  of  them  is  hugging 
to  his  heart  that  false  and  lying  hope,  that  he 
can  somehow  rise  above  his  fellows. 

"And  what  are  they?  What  are  they?  Fuel 
of  the  fire!  Fuel  of  the  fire  of  John  Sargent's 
madness !" 


276        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

He  stopped  short,  and  his  face  broke  into  a 
good-natured  smile  at  his  own  heat. 

"Forgive  me,  Dean,"  he  said  in  confusion.  "I 
— I  really  didn't  intend  to  make  a  speech  here 
to-night." 

But  Father  Driscoll  did  not  smile.  He  looked 
gravely  at  his  young  assistant,  and  said  simply: 

"My  boy,  there  is  nothing  to  apologize  for.  I 
have  lived  through  the  times  and  the  conditions 
that  have  made  the  American  working-people 
what  they  are.  I  am  as  they  are.  I  think  as 
they  think. 

"You  come  with  a  newer,  fresher,  point  of 
view.  It  may  well  be  that  your  sight  is  better 
than  mine. 

"My  generation  of  priests  had  its  hands  full 
picking  up  the  scattered  elements  of  Catholicity 
in  this  country  and  holding  them  together  and 
building  them  up  into  what  we  now  have.  Our 
work  is  done,  and  we  are  going  fast. 

"Your  generation  has  bigger,  wider  problems 
before  it  than  mine  had.  God  sparing  you  to 
my  age,  you  will  see  more  striking  changes  than 
I  have  seen.  I  believe  that  the  next  fifty  years 
in  this  country  will  be  more  lastingly  decisive  for 
the  Church  of  Christ  than  any  fifty  years  that  she 
has  seen. 

"But,  after  all,  future  as  well  as  past,  there  is 
but  one  answer  to  every  question,  one  solution  to 
every  problem — the  Grace  and  the  eternal,  abid- 
ing Wisdom  of  Christ.  If  you  had  not  that  with 


"FUEL  OF  THE  FIRE"         277 

you,  your  generation  of  priests  in  this  country 
might  well  tremble  at  the  tasks  and  perils  before 
you. 

"I  do  not  know  how  it  will  work  out.  But  I 
remember  this  from  history:  every  convulsion  of 
the  world,  every  great,  seething  crisis  of  human- 
ity has,  ultimately,  worked  out  for  the  good  of 
Catholicity.  The  Church  has  never  really  suf- 
fered from  conflict  or  agitation.  She  emerges 
stronger  out  of  every  struggle.  Too  much  se- 
curity, with  its  consequent  stagnation,  has  ever 
been  the  one  thing  to  hurt  her. 

"A  social  and  economic  readjustment  of  the 
power  and  wealth  of  this  country  is  coming. 
Every  thinking  man  sees  that  it  is  inevitable.  If 
it  can  only  be  brought  about  through  the  bitter 
struggle  that  you  foresee,  then  the  Catholic 
Church  will  suffer,  of  course. 

"But,  of  all  organized  religion,  she  alone  will 
live  through  the  struggle.  She  will  stand  alone. 
Then  will  be  her  opportunity — and  her  test.  It 
will  be  the  only  fair  test  she  has  had  in  modern 
life.  It  will  be  grand!  'Twill  be  heart-lifting! 
I  see  it!  The  grandest,  the  most  telling  fight  for 
Christ's  Kingdom  that's  ever  been  made. 

"Dear  man!"  he  broke  out,  "do  you  know  the 
privilege  that's  yours!  Oh,  to  be  young!  To 
have  a  mind  trained  for  it  as  yours  is — and  the 
courage!  And  to  have  a  battle  like  this  ready 
made  for  you  to  throw  hand  and  heart  and  soul 
into  it! 


278        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"I  wish  I  could  throw  back  the  years.  But 
no,"  he  said,  catching  himself  up.  "No,  I  am 
old.  The  old  things  pass.  I  would  not  do. 
New  times,  new  men,  new  minds. 

"Now,  if  you  please,  will  you  tell  me  who's 
making  the  speeches,"  he  said  laughingly.  "Be 
off  to  your  bed.  I  see  you're  dying  to  be  gone." 

"Dean,"  said  Father  Huetter,  as  he  gathered 
up  a  hat,  a  magazine,  and  an  overcoat  that  be- 
longed to  him,  and  prepared  to  go,  "the  next 
time  I  set  out  to  lecture  you  on  any  subject,  I'll 
be  careful  to  pick  one  that  I  know  something 
about.  Apparently,  you  had  this  one  all  thought 
out  before  I  was  born." 

"'Tis  a  big  pattern,  Father,"  said  the  Dean 
quickly.  "You  see  one  part,  I  see  another.  No 
man  can  see  more  than  a  little  of  the  mighty  de- 
sign as  it  works  out  of  the  loom  of  God." 

Father  Huetter  said  a  thoughtful  good-night 
and  went  slowly  up  the  stairs. 

The  Dean  rose  and  walked  heavily  across  the 
room  to  the  window.  Pulling  aside  the  curtain, 
he  stood  looking  out  into  the  night. 

Down  to  the  right,  at  intervals  of  a  minute  or 
so,  the  pall  of  the  night  was  hurled  back  regu- 
larly by  a  great  flare  of  light  from  one  of  John 
Sargent's  furnaces.  For  a  long  time  the  Dean 
stood  there  fascinated,  watching  the  great  paws 
of  fire  that  shot  out  spitefully  from  the  beast  of 
fire  and  iron  that  was  John  Sargent's  mill.  But 
it  was  not  the  sardonic  beauty  of  the  scene  that 


"FUEL  OF  THE  FIRE"          279 

held  the  old  priest.  He  was  watching  flash  after 
flash  as  it  leaped  from  out  the  belly  of  the  fur- 
nace. He  counted  them  aimlessly,  but  with  an 
undercurrent  of  sickening  thought  running  be- 
neath his  mind.  He  had  heard  some  one  say  that 
every  so  many  flashes  of  that  light- — he  could  not 
now  remember  the  number — meant  a  man's  life. 
Just  about  so  many  times  that  vicious  paw  of  the 
beast  struck  out  harmlessly.  Then,  it  caught  its 
prey,  devoured  him,  and  went  on  with  its  count 
for  the  next.  From  the  outside  there  would  be 
nothing  to  tell  what  flash  had  been  the  fatal  one. 

The  Dean  caught  himself  wondering  if  the 
count  were  nearly  full.  Whether  this  flash  or 
the  next  one  would  mean  a  feast  for  the  man- 
eating  thing  whose  brain  was  John  Sargent. 

"Fuel  of  the  fire,"  he  repeated,  recalling 
Father  Huetter's  expression.  "It  is  the  very 
thing  that  Isaias  saw  and  pictured." 

Shuddering,  he  turned  away  from  the  sight  of 
the  mill  and  looked  up  over  the  line  of  the  hills  to 
the  cold,  calm  stars  above.  The  great  northern 
constellations,  cut  clean  and  sharp  in  the  frosty 
air,  stood  ranked  about  the  pole-star  like  bolt- 
heads  of  white  steel  in  the  roof  of  heaven. 

As  his  eye  roamed  from  star  to  star,  he  was 
struck — as  though  he  had  never  before  thought 
of  it — by  the  vastness  of  God's  universe.  Thou- 
sands, nay  millions  of  suns  out  there  in  the  un- 
limned  spaces,  all  feeding  light  and  life  to  millions 
upon  millions  of  unseen,  unreckoned  worlds ! 


280        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

Then  he  remembered  that  he  was  looking  at 
only  a  patch  of  the  sky.  The  cold,  dispassionate 
immensity  of  it  all  fell  upon  him  and  seemed  to 
crush  him  to  the  littleness  of  nothing. 

"Dear  God!"  he  breathed  out  his  simple,  boy- 
like  wonder  and  adoration,  "Dear  God,  what  a 
parish  You  have!  Is  it  not  an  impertinence  to 
ask  You  to  think  of  this  pin-point  in  it?" 

The  telephone  rang  out  a  hurried,  frightened 
call.  There  was  a  human,  frantic  note  in  the 
ring  that  ran  through  the  house  like  a  shriek. 
The  Dean  dropped  the  curtain  and  hastened  out 
into  the  hall. 

Down  in  the  great  die-room  of  his  plant  John 
Sargent  was  putting  on  pressure.  Watch  in 
hand,  he  stood  in  the  center  of  the  room  driving 
the  four  great  trip-hammers  beyond  all  limits 
of  safety  and  endurance — the  endurance  of  even 
chilled  steel. 

He  was  the  incarnate,  implacable  spirit  of 
energy  gone  mad.  Rush !  was  the  one  word  upon 
his  lips.  Speed !  was  the  one  idea  that  went  sear- 
ing through  his  brain.  To  push  those  hydraulic 
hammers  to  the  very  last  ounce  of  their  ten-ton 
strokes;  to  give  them  no  rest,  no  respite;  to  be 
ever  at  them,  goading  them,  harrying  them  up  to 
the  limit,  and  over  the  limit  of  their  power;  this 
had  become  an  obsession  with  John  Sargent. 

Now,  a  hydraulic  hammer  is  the  most  sullen 
machine  that  a  man  ever  attempts  to  drive.  It 


"FUEL  OF  THE  FIRE"          281 

has  no  sympathy  with  useful  work.  It  will  not 
spring  to  its  work  with  that  readiness  and  good- 
will that  seems  to  make  so  many  engines  almost 
human  to  the  touch.  It  seems  to  know  that  the 
primary  business  of  its  mighty  blows  is  a  business 
of  destruction.  Privately  it  seems  to  resent  do- 
ing any  work  but  that  of  destruction.  But  a 
canny  man,  who  is  beyond  fear  and  nervousness, 
and  who  has  a  hand  of  steel,  can  make  a  hammer 
do  marvels.  A  nervous,  frightened  man,  a  man 
who  has  lost  the  touch,  cannot  make  the  hammer 
hit  the  block  true  once  in  twenty  strokes.  The 
right  man  can  make  it  punch  a  perfect  eye  in  the 
smallest  needle,  not  once  but  a  thousand  times  in 
succession. 

The  four  hammers  that  John  Sargent  timed 
were  in  a  vile  temper.  Any  man  with  an  ear  to 
hear  what  a  machine  means  could  have  sensed  the 
sullen  roar  of  the  hydraulic  as  it  pulled  away 
from  the  block,  tearing  at  its  own  vitals  in  the 
roof  of  the  room.  And  every  down  stroke  had 
the  thud  of  a  vicious,  murderous  kick. 

But  John  Sargent  was  not  listening  to  the  hu- 
mor of  machines.  He  had  eight  machines  under 
his  eye.  Four  of  them  were  costly,  beautiful 
wonders  of  their  kind,  things  of  steel  and  electric 
current  and  the  laws  of  water  under  pressure. 
There  need  be  no  limit  to  the  work  of  these  four 
machines,  if  only  he  could  get  the  other  four  ma- 
chines to  go  with  them. 

The  other  four  machines  were  things  of  bones 


282        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

and  blood  and  a  little  flesh,  and  their  motive 
power  was  vaguely  called  a  soul.  They  were  not 
wonders.  They  were  common  things,  and  they 
were  not  lovely.  Neither  were  they  costly. 

The  latter  four  machines  said  that  the  former 
four  machines  could  not  be  driven  beyond  fifty 
strokes  to  the  minute. 

"You  lie  and  you  shirk,"  said  John  Sargent. 
"The  hydraulics  will  go  as  fast  as  your  clumsy 
hands  will  feed  and  clear  them." 

Their  hands  were  not  clumsy.  They  were 
clever  and  deft  and  true:  otherwise,  they  would 
not  have  remained  on  the  arms  to  which  they  be- 
longed. 

But  the  machines  did  not  answer.  They  knew 
that  thirty-five  strokes  to  the  minute  was  fair 
work.  At  that  rate  a  man  had  about  a  second 
and  a  half  in  which  to  yank  a  stamped  piece  of 
metal  out  from  under  the  die  as  it  rose  and  jam 
in  another  piece  for  it  to  fall  upon.  And  the 
metal  must  be  placed  on  the  block  with  hair- 
breadth precision. 

The  men  had  been  speeded  up  to  fifty  strokes 
without  a  murmur,  while  their  counterparts,  the 
other  four  machines,  roared  and  groaned  and 
fought  above  them. 

Beyond  that  the  men  said  the  speed  could  not 
go.  They  did  not  say  that  they  could  not  do  it. 
They  said  it  could  not  be  done.  For,  though 
they  were  cheap,  they  knew  that  at  their  craft 
four  better  men  than  they  did  not  live. 


"FUEL  OF  THE  FIRE"          283 

So  John  Sargent  stood,  watch  in  hand,  to 
prove  that  they  were  liars.  Slowly,  cautiously, 
as  John  Sargent  raised  his  hand,  a  man  up  in 
the  roof  of  the  room  threw  in  switches  to  feed 
more  current  to  the  whining  motors.  That  man 
up  there  believed  that  the  extra  pull  would  in- 
evitably tear  one  of  the  hammers  from  its  hold 
and  send  it  crashing  down,  himself  with  it,  to 
ruin.  But  he  went  on  steadily  applying  the 
greater  current.  The  men  below  the  machines 
had  not  the  slightest  doubt  that  one  of  the  four 
hammers  would  crack  under  the  strain  and  come 
down  to  kill  him  or  one  of  his  three  fellows.  But 
they  went  on  with  their  lightning-like  cunning, 
snatching  the  cut  metal  from  the  die  with  the  left 
hand  and  flicking  the  new  piece  into  place  with 
the  right. 

For  five  minutes  the  strokes  went  on  up  stead- 
ily, gaining  one  stroke  to  the  minute ;  the  human 
machines  automatically  tuning  themselves  up  to 
the  new  speeds. 

At  fifty-five  the  gain  was  stopped,  while  the 
motors  reeled  and  staggered  trying  to  accustom 
themselves  to  the  new  load. 

But  John  Sargent  raised  his  hand  higher,  rose 
upon  his  toes  as  though  to  push  the  motors,  and 
stamped  his  foot.  And  the  motors  staggered  on, 
on  up  to  where  the  speed  was  clearly  above  sixty ! 

He  was  a  man  maddened,  possessed,  with  the 
feeling  that  by  his  very  will  he  could  drive  things 
beyond  their  physical  limits.  And  things,  even 


284        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

such  things  as  hydraulic  hammers,  lent  them- 
selves to  his  madness. 

Had  those  machines  been  anything  but  the 
sullen,  unaccountable  power-hammers  that  they 
were,  one  of  them  would  have  broken  away  some- 
where. But  no.  Somehow,  in  the  gloomy,  vi- 
cious spirit  that  abides  in  all  their  kind,  they 
seemed  to  take  a  decision.  And  they  went  on, 
striking  beautifully  and  perfectly  to  the  new 
time. 

John  Sargent  dropped  his  hand,  snapped  his 
watch,  and  glowered  around  in  triumph  at  the 
four  cheap  machines  on  the  ground.  He  had 
set  the  pace  for  them,  and  his  four  costly,  depend- 
able machines  would  see  that  they  kept  it. 

The  men  could  not  spare  him  a  look  or  a 
thought.  They  could  only  speculate  imperson- 
ally on  the  problem  of  how  long  it  would  be,  at 
this  speed,  before  one  of  them  must  lose  his  right 
hand — the  left  was  never  in  danger. 

Sargent  hurried  from  that  room  and  down 
through  the  next,  where  the  gaunt  white  torsos 
of  men  stripped  to  the  waist  gleamed  under  the 
white  of  the  electric  glare  above  and  blistered 
over  the  whiter  glare  of  the  running  metal  which 
they  puddled  in  the  molds. 

Men  everywhere  looked  furtively  at  him  and 
shrank  away  instinctively.  He  could  feel  it. 
They  were  afraid  of  him.  Not  physically. 
There  was  nothing  of  that  sort  in  their  looks. 

But  Sargent  did  not  stop  to  analyze  them 


"FUEL  OF  THE  FIRE"          285 

or  their  feelings.  He  was  on  his  way  to  the 
furnace-room.  It  was  the  biggest  and  most  di- 
rectly expensive  of  all  the  units  of  his  mill.  And 
into  it,  since  that  day  when  he  had  come  to  Milton 
to  take  back  his  mill  from  the  control  of  the  Gov- 
ernor and  to  fight  his  enemies,  he  had  thrown  the 
greatest  part  of  his  energy  and  driving-power. 
Here  among  the  furnaces  was  the  thumping 
heart  of  his  great  plant.  And  here,  sleepless, 
baggy-eyed,  furious,  he  had  fought  to  clip  a  little 
off  the  time  of  every  operation,  to  crowd  a  little 
more  metal  into  every  furnace. 

And  he  had  succeeded.  There  was  no  doubt 
of  that.  He  had  practically  doubled  the  enor- 
mous normal  output  of  his  mill.  He  had  cut 
corners  everywhere.  And  money  was  pouring 
back  to  him :  real,  hard  money  that  would  put  him 
where  he  could  fight  the  world.  A  few  weeks 
more  of  this  and  he  would  have  knocked  the  mar- 
ket from  under  the  International.  He  would 
deal  that  inflated  and  top-heavy  combine  a  blow 
from  which  it  would  never  recover.  Then  he 
could  turn  and  deal  with  the  other  enemies  whom 
he  had  marked. 

But  he  was  not  yet  satisfied  with  that  furnace- 
room.  It  had  done  much,  but  it  could  do  more. 
The  momentum  of  his  driving  frenzy  of  the  past 
weeks  would  not  let  him  stop.  He  refused  to 
know  when  he  had  come  to  the  last  possible  meas- 
ure of  work  and  power  in  that  room. 

The  furnace-room  is  at  once  the  heart,  the 


286 

stomach,  and  the  nerve  center  of  every  iron  mill- 
ing plant.  The  whole  plant  is  driven,  nourished, 
and  controlled  from  here.  Here  the  tension 
upon  every  man,  however  unimportant  his  work 
may  seem,  is  heart-breaking.  Speed  is  the  dom- 
inating factor  in  every  operation,  while  the  loss 
or  the  saving  of  thousands  of  dollars'  worth  of 
material  may  turn  upon  a  judgment  that  must  be 
arrived  at,  given,  and  acted  upon  all  in  the  wink- 
ing of  an  eye. 

Sargent  stamping  into  the  room  seemed  to  send 
a  galvanic  spark  into  every  man  and  thing  in  it. 
Men  who  were  sulky,  and  who  always  worked 
more  deliberately  when  they  found  other  bosses 
eyeing  them,  found  themselves  jumping  to  their 
work  when  Sargent  came  near.  Afterward  they 
cursed  themselves  for  what  they  thought  was 
their  servility.  They  were  wrong.  John  Sar- 
gent had  always  had  a  dynamic  power  over  men 
and  machines.  He  had  always  been  able  to  get 
more  out  of  them  than  any  other  man  could. 
And  in  these  weeks,  when  the  whole  overweening 
force  of  his  will  had  been  set  to  drive  them,  his 
power  over  things,  animate  and  inanimate,  that 
worked  for  him  had  become  almost  uncanny. 

He  climbed  a  ladder  and  began  walking  the 
runways  above  the  furnaces.  From  here  he 
could  dominate  and  throw  his  will  behind  every 
man  and  every  operation  in  the  room.  Men 
leaped  at  their  tasks  without  stopping  to  wonder 
why  they  did  so.  The  giant  cranes  picked  up 


"FUEL  OF  THE  FIRE"          287 

their  loads  and  swung  them  around  the  room 
swiftly  and  surely.  The  great  buckets  with  their 
tons  of  seething,  bubbling  metal  came  flaring  up 
out  of  the  furnaces,  shooting  their  flare  of  light 
up  into  the  open  sky,  and  went  hurrying  out  to 
the  molders.  Here  was  John  Sargent  in  the 
heart  of  his  kingdom.  He  gloated  in  the  hot, 
panting,  sulphurous  breath  of  it  all. 

But  it  was  not  enough.  Machines  that 
worked  so,  could  work  more.  Men  who  went  at 
that  gait  could  be  driven  a  little  faster. 

Seven  men  with  seven  wheelbarrows  made  a 
chain  to  wheel  slugs  of  raw  iron  to  a  furnace  that 
had  just  been  cleaned  out.  Officially  these  seven 
were  not  men.  The  Milton  Machinery  Com- 
pany knew  them  solely  by  the  numbers  from 
F384  to  F390.  Colloquially  they  were  seven 
"Hunks."  Of  all  the  things  that  worked  for 
John  Sargent  these  were  the  cheapest.  It  cost 
absolutely  nothing  to  replace  one,  or  a  dozen,  of 
them. 

They  wheeled  their  loads  straight  across  the 
room  at  a  height  of  thirty  feet  from  the  floor  on 
a  narrow  iron  bridge  that  had  no  guard  or  rail 
of  any  kind.  They  went  back  with  the  empty 
barrow  by  another  and  longer  route. 

About  midway  under  their  bridge,  but  a  little 
to  the  left  of  it,  stood  the  largest  furnace  in  the 
room.  Six  times  in  twenty-four  hours  the  great 
open  bucket  came  up  out  of  the  furnace,  carry- 
ing eight  tons  of  stewing,  sputtering  iron.  It 


288        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

swung  up  past  the  bridge,  clearing  it  only  by 
inches,  on  up  nearly  to  the  roof.  There  the 
"traveler"  caught  it  and  rushed  it  out  to  the  other 
room. 

The  seven  did  not  appear  to  have  caught  the 
spark  that  John  Sargent's  will  threw  into  the 
room.  They  worked  well,  but  stolidly,  wood- 
enly,  a  way  that  did  not  please  him.  Scowling, 
he  crossed  over  and  stood  above  the  empty  fur- 
nace where  the  seven  came  with  their  loads. 

The  change  was  instant.  The  seven  shook 
themselves  out  of  their  woodenness  and  came 
charging  across  with  their  barrows  as  though  he 
yanked  them  on  a  wire.  That  was  right.  That 
was  the  way  he  wanted  to  see  things  work. 
F386,  a  tow-haired,  undergrown  boy,  fresh  from 
the  Carpathian  Mountains,  ran  on  to  the  little 
bridge  pushing  four  hundred  pounds  of  iron 
ahead  of  him.  Perhaps  F386  did  not  notice  that 
the  bucket  swung  up  out  of  the  furnace  beneath 
just  as  he  came  upon  the  bridge.  Perhaps  he 
did  notice  it,  but  thought  he  could  cross  before  it 
came  up  dangerously  near  the  bridge.  It  is  not 
important.  Could  he  have  crossed  safely  if  John 
Sargent  had  not  yelled?  It  is  possible.  But  it 
is  not  important.  John  Sargent  yelled :  "Come 
on,  Hunk!" 

F386  did  not  know  what  John  Sargent  said. 
He  stopped,  or  tried  to.  The  loaded  barrow 
dragged  him  along.  He  could  not  think  to  let 
go  of  it.  The  wheel  of  the  barrow  ran  off  the 


"FUEL  OF  THE  FIRE'3          289 

bridge.  The  barrow  toppled  over  and  fell,  to 
the  right.  In  falling,  it  turned  and  one  of  its 
handles  kicked  F386  in  the  chest. 

F386  toppled  and  fell  off  the  bridge — to  the 
left.  The  bucket  was  directly  underneath  on 
that  side. 

The  barrow  clanged  down  on  the  floor.  The 
bucket,  sputtering  and  fuming,  went  on  up. 
Some  man  stopped  the  electric  winder  that  was 
raising  the  bucket.  The  bucket  hung  quiet  in 
mid-air.  John  Sargent  stood  quiet,  rubbing  the 
line  of  his  lips  with  his  ringer.  One  man  ran  to  a 
telephone.  Every  other  man  in  the  room  stood 
in  whatever  attitude  he  had  been  in  at  the  mo- 
ment the  thing  happened.  A  full  minute  passed 
— nearly  two  minutes,  a  long,  hard-breathing 
time.  No  man  moved. 

Suddenly  John  Sargent  dashed  his  hand  down 
from  his  lips,  shook  himself  loose  from  the  thing 
that  had  held  him,  and  shouted: 

"Who  stopped  that  winder?  Run  that  bucket 
out  to  the  molds." 

You  see,  John  Sargent  was  not  really  sane  at 
this  time. 

No  man  moved  to  obey.  The  chain  that  had 
been  wheeling  iron  stood  in  its  tracks  where  the 
broken  link  had  left  it.  Men  down  on  the  floor 
of  the  room  looked  at  the  barrow  where  it  lay, 
looked  up  at  John  Sargent,  looked  up  at  what 
swung  in  the  air. 

Again  and  again  Sargent  bellowed  his  com- 


290        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

mand  down  to  the  men  near  the  winder  to  start 
it.  He  called  them  by  name  to  do  it  and  when 
they  stood  motionless  he  shouted  down  that  they 
were  then  and  there  discharged. 

Then  he  ran  down  the  ladder  and  started  for 
the  hoister,  to  set  it  in  motion  himself.  But  they 
would  not  let  him.  They  crowded  around  and 
kept  him  away  from  it.  Finally  two  strong  men 
sat  him  down  upon  a  bench  and  held  him  there, 
impotent,  and  speechless  with  rage. 

Five — ten  minutes  passed.  What  were  the 
men  waiting  for?  Leadership.  They  did  not 
know  what  should  be  done. 

In  the  end,  old  Peter  Choyniski  solved  the 
matter.  He  stepped  to  the  hoister  and  slowly  let 
the  bucket  down  till  it  ran  upon  a  second  "trav- 
eler" that  went  out  through  the  end  of  the  room 
and  out  over  the  river.  Then  he  stopped  and 
waited. 

Dean  Driscoll  came  striding  into  the  room. 
Jim  Heffernan  met  him  near  the  door. 

"It  was  no  use  calling  you,"  Heffernan  ex- 
plained. "But  I  didn't  right  know  what  I  was 
doing,  Father.  A  Hunk  fell  into  the  bucket," 
he  went  on,  looking  up,  "and  he — you  see — 
there's  nothing  left." 

Old  Peter  Choyniski  went  on  with  his  business. 
He  set  the  "traveler"  into  a  slow  motion.  By  a 
common  impulse  every  man  in  the  room  followed 
down  to  the  end  of  the  room,  where  the  great 
doors  swung  open  upon  the  bulkhead  and  the 


"FUEL  OF  THE  FIRE"          291 

broad,  quiet  pond  of  the  river  above  the  dam. 

Every  man  except  one:  John  Sargent  sat 
where  they  had  left  him,  forgotten. 

He  saw  the  crowd  of  men  out  upon  the  bulk- 
head. He  saw  the  bucket  move  out  to  the  end 
of  the  "traveler"  frame,  well  over  the  water. 
He  saw  the  bucket  lowered,  saw  its  mighty  jaws 
unlocked,  saw  its  load  slip  down  to  the  water.  A 
great  pillar  of  steam  shot  up  from  the  icy  water. 
He  saw  Father  Driscoll  kneel  on  the  stones  of 
the  bulkhead,  saw  all  but  a  few  of  the  men  doing 
the  same.  He  got  up,  shivering,  rubbing  his 
lips ;  and  went  up  to  his  office. 


CHAPTER  XII 
THE  PRISONER  OF  HIS  SOUL 

IN  the  trial-room  of  the  court  house  of  Mohawk 
*  County  a  farce  was  being  acted  out. 

High  up  on  the  west  wall  of  the  room,  on  a 
broad  panel  of  black  walnut,  the  Scales  of  Jus- 
tice, "that  are  tipped  by  a  hair,"  hung  graven  to 
a  gigantic  measure.  All  men  might  see  that  the 
business  of  this  room  was  the  business  of  Justice 
herself.  On  the  bench  under  the  panel  sat  Icha- 
bod  Whitcomb,  a  judge  reverend  of  mien,  un- 
swerving of  eye,  inexorable  as  the  falling  sword 
in  judgment.  On  the  tall  walnut  rampart  that 
ran  nearly  the  whole  width  of  the  room  in  front 
of  the  judge  there  was  carved  a  great  open  book, 
a  symbol  that  here  in  this  place  the  doings  of  men 
were  to  be  truly  read.  At  the  right,  in  two  rows 
of  stalls,  one  raised  above  and  behind  the  other, 
sat  twelve  men,  citizens,  peers  of  the  realm,  each 
man  a  sworn  judge.  At  the  side  of  their  enclo- 
sure stood  an  officer  of  the  law's  own  majesty, 
sworn  to  guard  these  twelve  from  any  and  every 
outside  influence. 

The  farce  was  that  all  of  this  impressive  ma- 
chinery, from  the  graven  scales  on  the  wall  down 

292 


THE  PRISONER  OF  HIS  SOUL    293 

to  the  stupid  image  of  the  law  who  stood  at  the 
door  of  the  jury-box,  was  set  for  the  one  pur- 
pose of  proving  guilty  a  man  who  was  not  guilty, 
whom  nobody  thought  guilty. 

The  farce  was  a  tragedy,  too.  But  the 
tragedy  was  not  so  much  that  Jim  Loyd,  who 
sat  in  a  raised,  railed  box  at  the  left  of  the  room, 
might  and  probably  would  be  convicted  of  a  crime 
which  he  had  not  committed.  The  tragedy  was 
one  darker  than  that.  Half  a  thousand  years 
ago  men  fought  for  trial  by  jury.  They 
achieved  it.  It  became  a  fact,  a  sacred  institu- 
tion. The  security,  the  life,  and  liberty  of  two 
hundred  millions  of  civilized  white  men  rest  upon 
it  to-day.  Trial  by  jury  in  the  beginning  was  a 
crude  safeguard  for  the  weak  individual  against 
the  law  in  the  hands  of  a  powerful  enemy.  It 
was  argued  that  the  powerful  enemy  could  not 
coerce  or  persuade  twelve  free  men  to  condemn 
unjustly  one  of  their  neighbors.  Or  at  least, 
men  agreed,  it  would  not  be  easy  to  so  coerce  or 
corrupt  twelve  free  men.  That  was  as  much  as 
one  could  say  positively  for  the  system,  that  it 
would  not  be  easy  to  make  it  serve  the  will  of  a 
powerful  bad  man. 

That  is  all  that  men  can  say  of  the  system  to- 
day. It  is  not  easy  to  place  twelve  corrupt  or 
corruptible  men  on  a  jury  together.  After 
civilization  has  worked  five  centuries  upon  the 
jury  system,  the  bulwark  of  a  man's  life  and  lib- 
erty, we  can  go  no  farther  than  to  say  that  the  in- 


294        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

dividual  is  usually  protected  by  it.  We  know 
that  the  very  precautions  and  guards  that  we 
have  put  about  the  system  can  be  and  are  some.- 
times  used  to  work  for  the  condemnation  of  in- 
nocent men. 

Here  was  the  tragedy  running  under  the  farce 
of  the  trial  of  Jim  Loyd  for  conspiring  to  blow 
up  John  Sargent's  mill.  It  was  not  Jim  Loyd 
that  was  on  trial.  The  jury  system  was  on  trial. 
The  community  which  supported  that  system  was 
on  trial.  The  State  was  on  trial.  So,  on  the 
one  hand,  the  "State"  was  trying  Jim  Loyd. 
And,  on  the  other  hand,  Jim  Loyd  was  trying  the 
State. 

The  "State"  was  moving  rapidly  to  find  Jim 
Loyd  guilty.  Jim  Loyd  had  already  decided 
that  the  State  was  guilty.  He  would  wait,  how- 
ever. He  had  promised  to  wait.  He  would 
give  the  State  every  opportunity  to  clear  itself. 
He  would  wait  for  the  farce  to  be  played  out. 

He  was  a  man  just  turned  thirty,  but  his  cor- 
rugated, sharp-cut  face  might  have  belonged  to 
a  man  of  fifty.  It  was  a  face  of  iron  and  white 
steel  and  smoldering  furnace  fires.  Because, 
for  eighteen  years  these  things  had  been  his  play- 
things and  his  tools. 

He  was  paying  but  little  attention  to  this  farce 
of  trial  of  which  he  was  the  central  figure.  He 
understood  the  marshaling  of  the  forces  against 
him.  He  foresaw  every  move  of  the  prosecution 
and  knew  its  effect.  He  had  not  been  surprised 


THE  PRISONER  OF  HIS  SOUL    295 

at  any  of  it.  His  knowledge  of  the  politics  and 
greed  and  coercion  by  which  John  Sargent's 
money  dominated  Mohawk  County  had  prepared 
him  for  it. 

In  his  mind  it  was  a  foregone  conclusion  that 
the  "State,"  in  the  person  of  a  servile  prosecut- 
ing attorney,  a  venal  judge,  and  twelve  studi- 
ously selected  jurymen,  should  convict  him  of 
this  particular  thing. 

But  there  was  a  larger  question  than  that. 
The  State,  in  the  larger  sense,  had  always  con- 
demned him.  That  was  the  important  thing. 
The  State  had  condemned  him,  a  boy  of  twelve, 
to  go  into  John  Sargent's  mill  and  catch  red-hot 
bolts  in  a  bucket  for  forty  cents  a  day.  It  was 
just  about  that  time  that  he  had  decided  to  be- 
come a  famous  baseball  catcher.  The  State  had 
made  different  arrangements  for  him,  had  given 
him  a  heavy  bucket  instead  of  a  catcher's  mitt, 
and  had  made  balls  out  of  rod  steel  for  him  to 
catch. 

But  it  was  a  game,  too,  in  that  day.  He  never 
minded  it.  He  pitted  his  eye  and  his  hand 
against  the  speed  and  bad  aim  of  the  men  as  they 
threw  the  bolts  to  him.  The  only  difference  was 
that  an  "error,"  in  this  game,  meant  a  badly 
burned  leg  or  arm. 

How  proud  he  was  that  night  when  he  straight- 
ened his  aching  back  and  strutted  home  to  his 
mother,  carrying  his  first  week's  pay — minus 
twenty  cents,  fines  for  bolts  dropped!  He  re- 


296        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

membered  now,  with  a  choke  in  his  throat,  how 
his  mother  slyly  laughed  and  cried  at  him  that 
night  as  he  marched  about  the  house,  thumbs  un- 
der his  suspenders,  patronizing  the  other  chil- 
dren— Jane  and  baby  Harry  that  was  killed — 
and  lecturing  her  on  how  to  get  the  most  for  the 
money. 

It  was  a  game,  and  because  he  grew  fast  and 
was  bigger  and  quicker  and  stronger  than  others, 
he  played  it  better.  He  played  it  so  well  that  at 
fifteen  he  was  drawing  the  pay  of  a  good  man. 
At  twenty  he  was  running  a  section  of  the  cast- 
ing room  with  forty  men  under  him.  At  twenty- 
five — John  Sargent  believed  in  young  men  and 
the  scrap-heap  was  always  near — Loyd  was 
given  charge  of  the  furnace  room  and  the  cast- 
ing room  together. 

His  pay  was  thirty  dollars  a  week.  During 
the  first  year  that  he  had  charge  of  those  rooms 
he  increased  the  net  apportioned  earnings  of 
those  two  rooms  by  eighteen  thousand  dollars. 

He  increased  those  earnings.  There  were  no 
changes  in  machinery  during  that  year.  There 
were  no  additional  overhead  expenses.  There 
was  no  increase  of  capital  invested  in  those  two 
rooms.  By  his  skill,  judgment,  and  personal 
force  Jim  Loyd  that  year  earned  eighteen  thou- 
sand dollars  for  the  Milton  Machinery  Company. 
The  Milton  Machinery  Company  acknowledged 
it — they  gave  him  two  dollars  a  week  more  pay 


THE  PRISONER  OF  HIS  SOUL    297 

for_  the  next  year.  If  during  the  next  year  he 
increased  the  earnings  of  those  two  rooms  an  ad- 
ditional eighteen  thousand  dollars,  they  would 
probably  give  him  another  two  dollars  increase 
in  pay. 

That  increase  was  impossible,  of  course.  By 
gigantic  efforts  he  had  during  that  one  year  set  a 
record  for  himself  which  he  could  never  better. 
The  rest  of  his  life — or  so  long  as  the  company 
allowed  him  to  keep  his  position — would  be  spent 
in  a  heart-breaking,  tooth-and-nail  fight  to  keep 
up  to  the  record  which  in  the  foolish  and  wasteful 
pride  of  youth  he  had  set  for  himself.  It  would 
not  be  long  before  some  young  college-turned 
superintendent,  himself  with  a  record  to  make, 
would  be  looking  for  a  man  who  could  do  more 
than  Jim  Loyd. 

So,  coming  into  his  twenty-seventh  year,  Jim 
Loyd  saw  that  something  was  wrong.  He  had 
played  the  game  at  which  the  State  had  set  him. 
He  had  played  the  game  honestly,  faithfully,  and 
better  than  any  other  man  he  knew  of.  And 
this  was  the  result.  He  saw  other  men,  men  of 
his  own  age,  men  who  had  none  of  his  ability  or 
power,  drawing  their  three  hundred  dollars  a 
month,  or  more.  And  that  was  not  all.  Those 
men,  at  from  twenty-five  to  thirty-five,  were  just 
beginning  their  careers.  They  had  twenty, 
maybe  thirty,  years  ahead  of  them  in  which  every 
good  piece  of  work  they  did,  every  record  they 


298        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

made  would  count  for  them,  would  bring  them 
on  up  to  more  money,  to  a  surer  place  in  their 
business. 

Jim  Loyd's  career  was  done.  He  had  reached 
a  dead-line.  He  knew  it.  He  had  come  swiftly 
up  to  the  line  beyond  which  a  man  who  begins 
work  with  his  hands  and  without  technical  train- 
ing and  education  cannot  go.  He  had  no  quar- 
rel with  those  other  men,  chemists,  engineers,  ex- 
perts, executives,  who,  though  older  than  he,  had 
still  years  ahead  of  them  in  which  to  advance. 

The  State,  Society- — whatever  you  called  the 
organization  of  things  as  they  are — had  given 
them  education  and  a  start  which  it  had  not  given 
to  him.  He  had  no  quarrel  with  that.  Those 
men  actually  earned  the  money  that  the  company 
gave  them.  They  were  worth  it,  or  they  would 
not  be  getting  it. 

But  the  State,  Society,  Things  as  They  Are, 
had  set  him  at  a  certain  game.  He  had  been  told 
to  work  honestly  and  faithfully,  and  to  push  on 
as  rapidly  as  possible.  He  had  done  all  that. 
But  the  State  failed  to  see  to  it  that  he  should  get 
what  he  won  in  the  game.  The  State  stood  by 
and  supported  John  Sargent  in  the  position  that 
John  Sargent  should  get  about  seventeen  dollars 
out  of  every  eighteen  that  Jim  Loyd  earned. 

He  had  no  quarrel  even  with  John  Sargent. 
John  Sargent  found  Things  as  They  Are,  and 
he  used  them,  that  was  all.  John  Sargent  found 
a  state  of  things  in  which  he  could  make  men  earn 


THE  PRISONER  OF  HIS  SOUL    299 

for  him  two,  five,  ten,  or  even  fifteen  times  what 
he  was  obliged  to  pay  them.  It  would  be  foolish 
to  blame  John  Sargent  for  using  things  as  he 
found  them. 

Jim  Loyd's  mind  went  cleanly  through  the 
problem  and  he  saw  that  his  quarrel  was  directly 
with  the  conditions  of  things,  with  the  ways  in 
which  men  were  organized  into  the  common- 
wealth, with  the  State,  in  fact. 

It  was  not  that  his  father  had  died  in  the  Sar- 
gent mill,  leaving  the  mother  and  three  children 
unprovided  for.  It  was  not  that  John  Sargent 
was  a  bad  man  and  a  legalized  extortioner.  It 
was  the  whole  organization  and  constitution  of 
things  that  worked  the  injustice. 

It  was  not  in  Jim  Loyd's  aggressive  nature  to 
stand  looking  dumbly  at  this  dead  wall  against 
which  he  had  come.  Immediately  he  began  look- 
ing for  the  way  through.  It  was  natural  that  he 
should  hear  and  study  the  arguments  of  Social- 
ism. It  was  in  the  air.  He  listened  avidly  to 
the  vaporings  of  men  who  had  had  a  better  sur- 
face education  than  he,  but  who  lacked  his  bold, 
clear  sight.  He  found  them  shallow  and  un- 
ready. They  gave  smart  half-answers  that  did 
not  answer  anything.  He  shook  them  all  off  and 
got  books,  dozens  of  books,  bushels  of  books. 
He  read  them  all,  impatiently,  greedily,  without 
direction  and  without  sequence.  Some  were 
merely  hysterical  rant.  Some  were  able  to  see 
what  was  wrong  with  the  constitution  of  things, 


300        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

but  as  soon  as  they  began  to  deal  in  remedies 
they  became  vague  and  rambled  into  futile,  child- 
ish generalities.  Their  remedies  ran  all  the  way 
from  the  courts  and  the  ballot-box  to  slow  and 
ignoble  death  for  every  man  who  owned  prop- 
erty. 

One  book  held  him  so  that  he  battled  with  it 
for  months  at  a  time.  He  came  to  hate  the  book ; 
but  he  went  back  at  it  again  and  again.  That 
book  began  with  the  plain  statement  that  the  idea 
of  an  omnipotent  God  creating  and  ruling  the 
world  was  the  greatest  existing  obstacle  to  the 
progress  of  democracy.  It  went  on  to  prove 
that  the  whole  existing  industrial  system  whereby 
one  man  was  able  to  exploit  the  work  of  another 
man  could  be  traced  directly  back  to  the  idea  of 
the  authority  of  God.  That  idea  of  God  and  the 
authority  of  God  must  be  stamped  out  of  men's 
minds  before  there  could  be  any  real  change  in 
things,  because  men  held  the  power  and  the 
wealth  of  the  world  on  the  theory  that  power  was 
God-given,  that  wealth  was  in  some  way  a  dis- 
pensation of  God. 

It  was  a  powerful  and  a  clever  book,  and  Jim 
Loyd  fought  with  it  page  by  page.  Somewhere 
in  it,  his  native  wit  told  him,  there  was  concealed 
a  clever,  damnable  lie  of  logic.  But  he  could  not 
find  the  lie. 

However,  his  mind  drove  on  through  the  windy 
fog  of  words  and  books  until  it  came  out  on  the 
other  side  and  he  found  himself  just  where  he 


THE  PRISONER  OF  HIS  SOUL    301 

had  started.  He  was  still  facing  the  fact  that 
the  State  upheld  John  Sargent  in  taking  away 
from  him  the  greater  part  of  his  earnings. 

He  went  into  the  Socialist  party  in  politics, 
not  because  he  thought  that  that  party  would 
ever  win  or  would  ever  accomplish  anything  last- 
ing if  it  did  win,  but  because  it  was  a  means  of 
advertising  certain  good  measures  which,  if  they 
were  well  advertised,  would  finally  be  taken  up 
by  one  of  the  great  parties.  So  far  as  he  could 
see,  that  would  be  the  only  thing  that  Socialism 
would  ever  accomplish  in  the  politics  of  the  coun- 
try. It  could  advertise  and  create  a  demand  for 
certain  reforms.  One  or  another  of  the  great 
parties  would  then  see  good  politics  in  them  and 
would  take  up  those  reforms  and  accomplish 
them. 

Temperamentally  he  hated  the  arm-swinging 
demagoguery  of  Socialism.  He  was  a  self-con- 
tained, almost  a  sullen  man.  By  instinct  he  dis- 
trusted men  who  talked  and  wrote  fluently.  He 
had  all  of  a  silent  man's  aversion  against  baring 
freely  to  the  world  the  things  that  he  felt  deeply. 
He  had  a  feeling  that  if  these  Socialists  really  be- 
lieved and  expected  to  back  up  the  things  they 
said,  they  would  not  be  so  ready  of  speech. 

Then  came  this  strike.  He  had  opposed  it 
from  the  moment  he  saw  it  coming.  It  was  com- 
ing at  the  wrong  time.  The  cause  of  the  strike 
was  not  a  good,  clear-cut  issue  that  would  appeal 
to  the  imagination  of  the  country.  The  Milton 


302        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

Machinery  Company  had  an  enormous  stock  on 
hand,  and  the  market  was  falling.  He  had 
weighed  all  these  things  and  had  fought  desper- 
ately to  keep  the  men  at  work.  Once  declared, 
however,  he  had  thrown  himself  into  it  and  had 
used  all  the  power  of  mind  and  body  that  he  pos- 
sessed, and  even  sometimes  the  weight  of  his  two 
big  fists,  to  hold  the  men  together,  to  keep  them 
orderly  and  to  feed  them. 

Everywhere  men  gave  way  to  him.  The  heads 
of  the  different  local  unions  gradually  shifted 
their  responsibilities  to  his  shoulders.  In  the  end 
he  found  himself  in  sole  and  absolute  control  of 
the  whole  strike.  He  found  more  than  that. 
He  found  weaker  men  beginning  to  lean  upon 
him.  He  came  to  cringe  from  the  patient,  ap- 
pealing looks  of  women,  especially  the  mute  for- 
eign women,  when  they  came  to  him  looking  for 
the  food  that  he  did  not  have  for  them.  His  soul 
quivered  when  he  caught  eyes,  hungry  and  big,  of 
little  children  looking  up  at  him.  They  had  been 
told  that  food  came  from  Jim  Loyd;  and  they 
looked  up  at  him  as  though  at  some  god  who 
might  any  moment,  if  he  were  so  pleased,  throw 
down  food  to  them. 

The  strike  came  to  be  his  strike.  It  took  on  a 
personal,  bitter,  desperate  nature,  such  as  he  had 
never  thought  a  strike  could  possess. 

Then  John  Sargent  came  to  Milton  to  take 
personal  charge  of  his  side  of  the  strike. 

Now  the  issue  was  fairly  set.    Jim  Loyd  was 


THE  PRISONER  OF  HIS  SOUL    303 

a  fighting  man  naturally.  And  like  every  fight- 
ing man,  he  was  better  suited  to  have  a  personal 
enemy  to  fight  against.  But  he  was  not  now 
fighting  John  Sargent  for  the  difference  between 
the  money  that  he  earned  and  the  money  that 
John  Sargent  gave  him.  He  was  fighting  the 
fight  of  weaker  men,  the  fight  of  starving  women, 
the  fight  of  puny,  dying  children. 

John  Sargent  struck  first.  He  could  not  know 
how  deeply  he  struck  that  night  when  he  had 
offered  Loyd  fifty  thousand  dollars  to  settle  the 
strike;  and  Loyd  had  been  tempted — no,  not 
tempted,  but  blinded  momentarily — by  the  flash 
of  money  and  the  possibilities  for  life  that  the 
money  revealed. 

John  Sargent  struck  again.  Harry  Loyd — 
baby  Harry — was  killed  in  front  of  John  Sar- 
gent's gate. 

John  Sargent  struck  again.  Jim  Loyd  was 
taken  away  from  the  coffin  of  his  brother.  He 
was  marched  to  the  county  jail.  He  had  been 
there  now  nearly  four  months,  awaiting  trial  for 
a  thing  which  he  could  not  have  done. 

John  Sargent  was  striking  again.  Jim  Loyd 
had  been  indicted  by  a  grand  jury  controlled  by 
John  Sargent  on  the  charge  of  inciting  and  con- 
spiring to  blow  up  the  plant  of  the  Milton  Ma- 
chinery Company.  He  was  now  being  given  a 
trial  by  jury.  The  judge  who  sat  under  the 
Scales  of  Justice  was  a  well-paid  employee  of 
John  Sargent.  He  received  three  thousand  dol- 


304        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

lars  a  year  from  Mohawk  County  for  his  work 
as  judge.  He  received  ten  thousand  dollars  a 
year  from  John  Sargent,  as  a  retainer — and  he 
was  worth  every  cent  of  it. 

No  man  who  had  ever  had  any  connexion  with 
or  sympathy  for  organized  labor  was  allowed 
upon  that  jury.  Three  of  the  jurymen  were 
secretly  small  stockholders  of  the  Milton  Ma- 
chinery Company.  Six  of  them  were  farmers 
whose  farms  were  heavily  mortgaged  to  one  or 
the  other  of  the  Milton  banks — controlled  by 
John  Sargent.  The  remaining  three  were  weak, 
negligible  men  who  could  easily  be  browbeaten 
into  voting  with  the  majority. 

Thus  John  Sargent  was  striking  a  final  blow. 
And  Jim  Loyd  had  not  struck  back.  Why? 
John  Sargent  had  struck  cruelly,  foully,  at  his 
manhood,  at  his  brother,  at  his  life  and  liberty. 
Why  had  Jim  Loyd  not  struck  back?  He  was 
a  fighting  man.  Why  had  he  thus  held  his  neck 
to  the  blows?  For  years  his  mind  had  been 
steeping  itself  in  the  outpourings  of  Socialism 
and  the  kindred  bloodthirsty  doctrines  that  fol- 
low it.  They  had  taught  him  nothing  that  he 
had  not  known  before.  They  had  shown  him  no 
way  to  deal  with  his  situation  or  with  the  state  of 
things  that  made  that  situation  possible,  and  in- 
evitable. But,  at  the  bottom  of  them  all,  when 
he  had  floundered  his  way  through  their  shallow, 
schoolboyish  theories  and  schemes,  he  found  al- 
ways one  concrete  conviction.  Tacitly  or  openly, 


THE  PRISONER  OF  HIS  SOUL    305 

they  all  agreed  that  the  existing  things  could  not 
be  changed  without  force.  Force  meant  killing. 
It  meant  the  rising  of  the  many  in  a  sweeping 
upheaval  of  blood  and  destruction  to  wipe  out  the 
few. 

Although  he  had  not  easily  agreed  to  this,  it 
had  appealed  strongly  to  him.  He  knew  it  was 
the  truth.  He  knew  that  at  least  it  was  the  truth 
for  the  present.  There  was  no  other  immediate 
way. 

Socialism  had  been  able  to  convince  him  of 
only  one  thing :  that  was  that  the  Law,  the  State, 
the  thing  that  holds  men  where  they  are,  is  simply 
the  will  of  the  strong.  That  was  government, 
that  was  law,  that  was  society.  This  was  the 
bedrock  of  Socialism.  It  was  a  thing  that  he 
could  understand  and  plant  his  feet  upon. 

And  who  was  stronger  than  he?  Where  was 
there  a  man  who  could  command  four  thousand 
strong  men  as  he  could  command  the  men  of  Mil- 
ton? Who  in  this  country  were  the  strong  if 
they  were  not  the  millions  of  men  who  toiled  with 
their  hands? 

Why  had  he  not  struck?  Why  had  he  stood, 
like  a  cow  in  the  stanchions,  in  John  Sargent's 
little  jail?  A  word  from  himself  would  have 
freed  him. 

All  was  a  farce.  The  jail  was  a  farce.  The 
Governor,  marching  his  troops  to  Milton,  and 
marching  them  away  again  on  John  Sargent's 
word,  he  was  a  farce. 


306         THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

The  will  of  the  strong  was  the  only  real  thing. 
Jim  Loyd  had  the  will,  and  he  was  strong. 
Why  had  he  not  struck? 

He  knew.  On  that  night,  so  long  ago  now, 
when  John  Sargent  had  struck  at  his  manhood 
and  his  truth  to  his  fellows,  he  had  wanted  to 
kill  John  Sargent  with  his  hands,  his  bare  hands, 
so  that  he  might  feel  the  man's  life  beat  out  be- 
tween them.  God  held  his  hands.  Later,  that 
same  night,  with  the  rage  of  destruction  upon 
him,  he  had  taken  from  its  hiding-place  enough 
dynamite  to  wreck  the  entire  mill.  He  had  ex- 
pected to  die  in  the  ruins.  And  he  had  looked 
across  the  valley  to  the  church  of  his  Faith  upon 
the  hill.  And  he  had  seen  Christ — so  that  his 
hand  was  stayed.  On  another  night,  the  night 
after  Harry  Loyd  was  killed,  he  had  been  ready 
to  walk  out  of  his  jail,  head  his  four  thousand, 
kill  John  Sargent's  guards,  and  take  into  his  own 
hands  everything  that  men  said  belonged  to  John 
Sargent.  He  could  have  done  it,  following  the 
will  of  the  strong.  But  an  old  man  with  Christ 
in  his  heart  had  stopped  him. 

Sometimes,  tramping  and  champing  in  the 
cage  where  the  will  of  the  strong  had  put  him,  he 
had  railed  at  himself  for  a  loose-lipped  threat- 
ener,  a  mouthing  Socialist  like  the  fluent  ones  he 
despised,  without  the  heart  to  do  the  things  that 
he  willed.  But  he  was  wrong  in  this.  He  did 
not  lack  the  courage.  The  element  of  fear  had 
been  left  out  of  his  composition.  He  was  a  man 


THE  PRISONER  OF  HIS  SOUL    307 

strong  to  the  roots.  Things  took  a  mighty  hold 
upon  Jim  Loyd.  His  passions  ran  in  deep  and 
terrible  riots.  That  one  final  lesson  of  Socialism, 
that  the  will  of  the  strong  is  the  only  law  of  men, 
had  taken  a  mighty  hold  upon  his  imagination. 
But,  deeper  than  passion,  deeper  than  blood  riot 
and  the  lust  to  kill,  deeper  than  imagination, 
there  were  still  depths  in  Jim  Loyd. 

In  those  unplumbed  depths  of  Jim  Loyd's  soul 
there  lived  God  and  the  Faith  of  Christ.  Out  of 
those  ultimate  depths,  at  the  crucial  moment, 
came  the  Prisoner  of  His  Soul,  Christ's  Grace,  to 
hold  his  raised  arm.  He  did  not  know  it ;  but  his 
faith,  the  Catholic  faith  of  his  heart,  of  his  blood, 
of  his  mother,  was  the  last,  the  ruling  force  of  his 
nature.  It  was  stronger  than  the  riot  of  unruly 
passions  in  his  blood.  It  was  stronger  than  the 
hold  that  any  teaching  could  take  upon  his  imagi- 
nation. It  was  stronger  than  Socialism.  It 
was  stronger  than  he. 

So  Jim  Loyd  sat  listening  to  testimony  that 
would  make  of  him  a  felon,  a  pariah,  an  outcast 
of  men.  The  big  trial-room  was  packed  to  the 
doors  with  eager,  scowling  men.  They  were 
men  who  had  worked  all  of  the  night  before  and 
who  had  snatched  a  little  breakfast  and  an  hour 
of  sleep  before  the  court  opened.  Heavy  with 
sleep,  their  eyes  still  black  with  the  grime  of  the 
night's  work,  they  sat  or  stood  doggedly  watch- 
ing and  listening.  They  could  not  believe  the 
thing  that  was  going  on  here  before  them.  But 


308        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

the  conviction  had  settled  upon  them  that  it  was 
going  on  to  the  end.  They  knew  that  Loyd  was 
not  guilty.  They  knew  that  Roger  Winters,  the 
prosecuting  attorney,  knew  that  he  was  not 
guilty.  They  knew  that  Ichabod  Whitcomb  on 
the  bench  was  aware  of  Loyd's  innocence.  They 
knew  that  there  was  not  a  juror  on  that  bench 
who  would  in  his  heart  be  convinced  that  Loyd 
was  guilty. 

Yet  they  saw  the  unbelievable  thing  going  on 
before  their  eyes,  just  as  John  Sargent  had  willed 
that  it  should  go  on.  What  they  saw  was  the 
failure  of  civilization.  It  was  one  of  the  proofs 
that  men  have  not  yet  found  the  way  to  protect 
themselves  against  the  power,  of  the  strong. 
That  they  had  never  before  seen  anything  so  pat- 
ent or  so  flagrant,  merely  proved  that  it  was  not 
easy.  The  tragedy  remained,  that,  after  ages  of 
struggle  for  personal  security",  it  was  still  pos- 
sible. 

The  men,  however,  were  not  concerned  with 
the  battle  of  civilization.  They  were  wondering 
how  long  Loyd  would  go  on  with  the  thing.  A 
word  from  him  would  have  brought  four  thou- 
sand men  to  tear  down  the  very  Scales  of  Justice 
from  that  room.  Would  he  give  the  word? 

Roger  Winters  was  examining  one  of  the  prin- 
cipal witnesses  for  the  "State."  This  witness, 
Victor  Sorrel,  was  one  of  a  gang  of  professional 
dynamiters  who  had  come  to  Milton  early  in  the 
course  of  the  strike  to  offer  their  services  to  the 


THE  PRISONER  OF  HIS  SOUL    309 

strikers.  Loyd  had  taken  the  explosives  from 
them  and  had  driven  them  from  the  town. 

"When  did  you  first  come  to  Milton?"  asked 
the  attorney. 

"Last  July." 

"Why  did  you  come  here?" 

"To  bring  dynamite  to  help  the  strike." 

"Did  you  use  the  dynamite?" 

"No.     Jim  Loyd  took  it  from  me." 

"Explain." 

"He  had  an  office  in  State  Street.  He  handled 
the  strike  there.  I  went  there  one  night  with  the 
stuff.  I  carried  it  in  a  mason's  tool-bag.  I  told 
him  what  I  had  and  what  I  could  do  with  it." 

"What  did  Loyd  say?" 

"He  said,  'Put  it  in  there.'  He  showed  me  a 
closet  in  the  office.  I  put  it  in  there  on  the 
floor." 

"What  then?" 

"The  closet  door  had  a  spring  lock.  I 
snapped  it  shut.  I  just  heard  the  snap  as  Loyd 
took  me  by  the  throat,  from  behind.  He  has  big 
hands  made  of  iron.  He  made  no  noise ;  neither 
did  I.  It  was  late  at  night.  He  carried  me  un- 
der one  arm  and  held  my  throat  with  his  hand. 
He  took  me  out  through  the  alley  at  the  back  and 
down  through  other  alleys  to  the  main  tracks  of 
the  U.  &  B.  I  kicked  and  fought,  but  I  could 
not  get  away  or  yell.  He  stood  on  the  east- 
bound  track  holding  me,  waiting  for  a  freight 
that  was  coming  up  on  the  west-bound  track." 


310        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"Go  on." 

"He  was  going  to  throw  me  under  the  wheels 
as  the  train  ran  by,  but  he  changed  his  mind.  A 
string  of  empty  coal  cars  came  by.  He  loosed 
my  throat  and  took  me  in  his  hands,  around  the 
body,  and  threw  me,  like  a  bag,  into  a  car.  I 
was  in  Buffalo  next  morning  with  my  neck  nearly 
broken." 

A  hum  of  comment  ran  round  the  room.  The 
men  had  not  heard  this  story  before.  They  had 
seen  this  man  in  town  at  that  time.  Many  of 
them  had  known  what  his  business  was.  But 
none  of  them  had  known  how  he  went.  The  wit- 
ness was  probably  telling  the  exact  truth.  It 
was  just  one  of  the  things  that  Loyd  would  do. 

When  the  court  became  quiet  again  the  prose- 
cutor continued: 

"Why  should  Loyd  wish  to  get  you  out  of  the 
town,  while  keeping  the  dynamite  here?" 

"He  wanted  to  do  everything  himself.  It  was 
not  a  Union  strike.  It  was  his  own  strike.  He 
wanted  to  be  the  big  man  of  it.  He  did  not  want 
any  one  to  get  credit  for  anything." 

Winters  turned  the  witness  over  to  Stanley 
Morgan,  counsel  for  Loyd. 

"Were  you  ever  convicted  of  any  crime?"  asked 
Morgan. 

"I  object,  Your  Honor,"  said  Winters  quickly. 
"The  witness  is  not  on  trial." 

"Sustained,"  growled  the  judge. 

"I  take  exception  to  the  ruling,"  said  Morgan 


in  a  monotonous  and  weary  voice.  It  was  the 
single  melancholy  privilege  accorded  to  him  in 
that  court.  The  same  play  had  gone  on  now  for 
two  days.  Practically  every  question  that  he 
had  attempted  to  put  to  any  of  the  "State's"  wit- 
nesses had  been  objected  to  and  ruled  out.  He 
had  not  been  allowed  to  draw  out  the  glaring  in- 
consistencies of  their  stories.  He  had  not  been 
given  a  chance  to  question  the  record  or  the  credi- 
bility of  any  witness.  The  prosecution  had  been 
allowed  to  put  statements,  guesses,  and  opinions 
upon  the  record  as  sworn  evidence,  and  he  had 
been  reduced  to  the  mere  formula  of  taking  ex- 
ception after  exception. 

Long  ago  he  had  told  Loyd  that  it  was  foolish 
to  look  for  any  semblance  of  a  fair  trial  in  Mo- 
hawk County,  and  that  he  should  appeal  for  a 
change  of  venue.  But  Loyd  had  stubbornly  in- 
sisted that  Mohawk  County  was  his  home,  and 
that  he  would  try  justice  here  just  as  much  as 
justice  would  try  him.  The  lawyer  did  not  know 
what  Loyd  meant. 

"Do  you  know  John  Sargent?"  Morgan  tried 
again. 

"I  object,"  repeated  Winters.  "Mr.  Sargent 
is  not  relevant  to  this  case." 

It  was  barefaced.  In  view  of  facts  and  law,  it 
was  almost  indecent.  But  the  judge  nodded  his 
assent  and  the  objection  stood. 

Morgan  threw  up  his  hands  in  disgust,  and  let 
the  witness  go.  The  judge  warned  the  lawyer 


312        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

against  a  show  of  contempt  for  the  ruling  of  the 
court. 

The  next  witness  was  Tony  Michelis,  a  cross- 
grained  little  hunchback  who  had  once  been  dis- 
charged by  Loyd  and  who  had  ever  since  held  a 
cripple's  unreasoning  hate  for  him.  In  the 
stormy  days  of  the  strike  he  had  spied  upon 
Loyd's  every  action.  He  had  carried  reports 
nightly  to  the  mill.  He  had  been  as  tireless  as 
Loyd  himself,  and  in  the  eighteen  and  twenty 
hours  of  each  day  in  which  Loyd  was  awake  and 
working  he  had  scarcely  let  him  out  of  sight. 
The  men  had  told  Loyd  that  Tony  was  tracking 
him,  but,  characteristically,  he  had  brushed  the 
little  hunchback  out  of  his  mind. 

"That  last  witness,"  said  Winters,  when  Tony 
had  been  sworn,  "did  you  ever  see  him  before?" 

"Yah.     I  seen  that  fallah." 

"Where  and  when  did  you  see  him?" 

"Thas  the  night  he  tole  you  'bout.  I  seen  him. 
Big  Jim  Loyd  he  got  him  on  the  neck." 

"Where  were  you?" 

"Me?  I  outsides  stands  on  the  sidewalk  und 
looks  in." 

"Did  you  see  a  bag?" 

"Yah.  I  seen  her.  White  bag.  That  fallah 
fetch  her." 

"What  was  done  with  the  bag?" 

"That  fallah  he  shove  her  inside  on  closet 
door." 

"What  happened  then?" 


THE  PRISONER  OF  HIS  SOUL    313 

"Big  Jim  Loyd  he  do  carry  that  fallah  out 
back  doors." 

"What  did  you  do?" 

"Me?  I  wait.  Ten  minute  come  back  Big 
Jim  Loyd.  He  take  out  that  bag  outside.  Put 
her  in  the  middle  on  floor.  Take  out  them 
things  inside." 

"What  things?" 

"Thas  dy'mite.     Seben  stick." 

"Do  you  know  dynamite  when  you  see  it?" 

"Yah.  I  know  her.  Work  on  quarry  with 
her." 

"What  else  was  in  the  bag?" 

"Got  nitro,  too.     Six  tube." 

"What  else?" 

"Got  one  clock.  One  spool  wire.  One  box 
caps." 

"What  did  Loyd  do  then?" 

"He  put  that  back  inside  bag,  soft.  Then  he 
put  out  that  light  und  come  outside  und  start 
down  the  street." 

"Did  he  see  you?" 

"Me?    No,  I  stand  in  the  wall  darkside." 

"Did  he  have  the  bag?" 

"Yah.  He  got  that  bag.  He  come  down 
street.  Turn,  then  he  come  upstreet  by  mill. 
Come  on  river.  I  come  too.  Got  boat  there. 
Big  Jim  Loyd  cross  river.  I  stand  on  bank- 
side.  He  go  on  hill  otherside.  Got  tree  up 
there.  He  stay.  Bimebye  come  back.  Got 
bag  empty.  Throw  bag  on  river.  Go  home." 


314         THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

Morgan  felt  that  there  was  nothing  to  be 
gained  by  attempting  to  cross-examine  the 
hunchback.  He  had  told  the  truth,  as  Morgan 
knew  it  and  as  perhaps  a  hundred  other  people 
knew  it.  Loyd  had  buried  the  explosives  up 
there  on  the  hill  across  the  river. 

There  was  a  stir  near  the  east  door  of  the  room, 
and  Loyd  turned  in  his  seat  to  see.  Father 
Driscoll  had  just  come  in.  Men  were  making 
place  for  him. 

The  Dean  had  not  been  present  at  the  trial  on 
any  of  the  preceding  days,  and  Loyd  wondered 
dully  why  he  had  come  now.  There  was  noth- 
ing that  he  could  do.  Though  he  knew  that  the 
old  priest  loved  him  and  understood  him,  he 
found  himself  nervously  wishing  that  Father 
Driscoll  would  keep  away  from  the  court.  He 
could  not  tell  what  might  happen.  His  will  was 
set  upon  a  certain  course ;  he  did  not  know  when 
the  moment  for  action  might  come,  and  he  had 
come  to  feel  that  the  appearance  of  his  friend  was 
always  disconcerting. 

The  business  of  the  trial  went  on. 

The  next  witness  was  a  private  detective  in 
the  employ  of  John  Sargent. 

He  fixed  the  night  when  Jim  Loyd  had  gone 
to  the  mill  to  see  Sargent.  He  told  how  he  had 
seen  Loyd  rush  out  of  Mr.  Sargent's  private 
office  and  how  he  had  followed  him  almost  at  a 
run  up  over  the  hills  and  on  a  long  tramp  through 


THE  PRISONER  OF  HIS  SOUL    315 

the  country  until  he  had  finally  doubled  back  to 
the  river. 

Questioned  professionally,  he  explained  at 
considerable  length  that  Loyd's  actions  at  the 
time  were  those  that  would  be  expected  of  a  man 
who  felt  that  he  was  being  watched.  A  man 
wanting  to  go  to  a  certain  place  and  feeling  that 
it  was  dangerous  to  go  there  openly,  would  very 
likely  run  off  in  an  opposite  direction  and  take 
his  time  doubling  back  to  the  point  of  his  ob- 
jective. Loyd's  actions  were  those  of  a  man  in- 
tending to  commit  a  crime. 

In  spite  of  Morgan's  objections,  the  man's  ar- 
gument was  allowed  to  go  into  the  record  as  ex- 
pert testimony.  Even  Ichabod  Whitcomb  saw 
a  sort  of  grisly  humor  in  the  ruling  as  he  gave 
it. 

The  man  had  followed  Loyd  across  the  river 
in  another  boat.  Had  crept  up  the  hill  after 
him  and  had  seen  him  dig  at  the  roots  of  a 
tree.  Loyd  had  picked  out  the  sticks  and 
tubes  and  the  firing  mechanism  and  wire.  The 
latter  was  the  very  thing,  the  detective  swore, 
that  had  been  used  in  the  explosion  of  the  mill. 
Loyd  had  stowed  the  things  about  his  person. 
Had  stood  a  while  looking  down  at  the  mill  and 
then  started  slowly  down  the  hill.  The  detec- 
tive had  been  obliged  to  let  Loyd  get  a  consider- 
able distance  ahead  of  him  in  crossing  the  river, 
but  had  easily  caught  up  with  him  when  both 


316        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

were  once  on  the  Milton  side.  He  had  followed 
him  up  through  a  side  street  of  the  village  and 
had  come  upon  him  seated  on  the  steps  of  the 
Catholic  church.  He  was  then  talking  with  the 
priest. 

Loyd  dug  his  nails  into  the  wood  of  the  rail- 
ing about  him  as  he  recalled  the  agony  of  that 
night. 

The  detective  was  excused.  The  prosecutor 
wrote  something  on  a  slip  of  paper  and  handed 
it  to  the  clerk,  who  read  out  the  name  of  the 
next  witness: 

"The  Reverend  James  Driscoll." 


CHAPTER  XIII 
THE  WILL  OF  THE  STRONG 


Dean  of  Milton  walked  quietly  up  the 
aisle  of  the  crowded  courtroom  and  took  his 
place  in  the  witness  stand.  A  profound  hush  of 
bewilderment  and  expectancy  fell  over  the  crowd 
of  anxious,  weary  men  who  jammed  the  room. 
It  had  not  occurred  to  any  one  in  Milton  that 
Father  Driscoll  might  be  called  as  a  witness  in 
the  prosecution  of  Jim  Loyd's  trial.  The  at- 
torney for  the  prosecution  had  served  the  sub- 
poena in  person,  so  that  only  he  and  the  priest 
knew  that  the  latter  was  to  appear. 

If  he  had  come  as  a  character  witness  for  the 
defense,  or  if  he  had  come  to  clear  up  some  point 
in  Jim  Loyd's  actions,  it  could  have  been  under- 
stood. But  that  the  prosecution  should  bring 
him  here  and  attempt  to  use  him  was  unbeliev- 
able. 

Loyd  that  morning  had  requested  to  be  se- 
cured to  one  of  the  jail  guards.  Fred  Wheeler, 
the  warden  of  the  jail,  who  was  responsible  for 
his  keeping,  was  a  good  man  and  his  friend.  He 
did  not  understand  the  reason  for  Loyd's  re- 
quest. But  he  did  what  was  asked.  He  locked 
Loyd's  left  arm  to  the  right  arm  of  a  stout  keeper 

317 


318        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

by  a  steel  chain.  On  a  raised  stool  beside  the 
prisoner's  box  the  keeper  sat  leaning  on  the  rail. 

As  Father  Driscoll  stepped  into  the  witness 
stand,  Loyd  started  to  rise,  but  the  chain,  which 
he  had  forgotten,  tugged  sharply  at  his  wrist — 
by  way  of  reminder.  He  looked  into  the  calm, 
clear-eyed  face  of  the  old  priest,  and  remem- 
bered that  he  had  promised  to  see  this  thing 
through  to  the  very  end. 

He  remembered  Sargent's  threat  that  he 
would  find  a  way  to  drive  Father  Driscoll  from 
Milton,  but,  on  sober  thought,  he  had  dismissed 
it  as  angry  bluster.  Now  he  did  not  know  what 
to  think.  He  would  wait. 

The  Dean  himself  was  as  much  puzzled  as  any 
one  in  the  room  by  the  action  of  the  prosecution 
in  calling  him.  Since  yesterday,  when  he  had 
received  the  subpoena,  he  had  been  beating  his 
brain  to  understand  the  significance  of  the  move. 
At  first  he  had  thought  that  it  was  only  a  part  of 
Sargent's  general  tactics,  a  ruse,  designed  to  give 
the  impression  that  the  priest  was  willing  to  assist 
in  the  prosecution  of  a  Union  man — that  the 
Church  generally  was  against  Labor.  But  he 
knew  that  John  Sargent  was  not  just  now  wast- 
ing his  time  creating  public  opinion.  He  must 
have  some  definite  and  immediate  motive  in  it. 
Slowly  and  reluctantly  Father  Driscoll  had  come 
to  the  conviction  that  the  move  meant  some  kind 
of  a  trap  for  himself. 

Attorney  Winters,  with  a  show  of  courtesy, 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  STRONG    319 

waived  the  form  of  the  oath  and  proceeded  di- 
rectly to  his  questions. 

"Do  you  remember,  sir,"  he  began,  "the  night 
of  the  twenty-ninth  of  August  last?" 

"I  do." 

"You  talked  with  the  prisoner  on  that  night?" 

"I  did." 

"Where  was  this?" 

"On  the  steps  of  my  church." 

"What  was  the  substance  of  the  conversation?" 

"Nothing  that  could  in  any  way  relate  to  this 
action." 

The  prosecuting  attorney  was  somewhat  taken 
back.  He  had  not  anticipated  difficulty  so  soon, 

"In  view  of  the  fact,"  he  said,  after  a  little 
pause,  "that  the  prisoner,  right  up  to  the  moment 
that  he  came  to  speak  to  you,  was  engaged  in  an 
act  that  led  directly  to  the  crime  charged  in  this 
action,  your  answer  seems  hardly  probable." 

"If  you  were  not  prepared  to  accept  my 
word,"  the  Dean  replied  stiffly,  "you  should  have 
exacted  the  formal  oath." 

"No,  no,  sir;  nothing  of  the  kind!"  exclaimed 
the  attorney  blandly.  "It  really  does  not  mat- 
ter whether  you  answer  that  question  or  not." 

He  did  not  wish  to  put  the  priest  under  oath. 
He  was  acting  under  instructions.  And,  so  far 
as  those  instructions  went,  or  even  so  far  as  the 
conviction  of  Loyd  was  concerned,  he  said  truly 
that  it  did  not  matter  whether  Father  Driscoll 
answered  that  particular  question  or  not. 


320        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"I  take  it,"  he  began  again,  "that  on  that  oc- 
casion you  gave  the  prisoner  advice?" 

"I  did." 

"You  are  his  spiritual  adviser?" 

"I  am  the  parish  priest  of  Milton." 

"Your  people  habitually  come  to  you  for  ad- 
vice? They  do  as  you  advise  them?" 

"Sometimes,"  said  the  Dean  drily. 

"Well,  then,  the  point  I  am  trying  to  make  is 
this,"  the  attorney  went  on,  taking  the  Dean  into 
his  confidence;  "we  have  proved  that  this 
prisoner  was  on  his  way  to  commit  a  crime  when 
he  saw  you.  We  have  proved  that  he  had  with 
him  the  means  of  committing  that  crime  while 
he  talked  with  you.  We— 

"You  have  proved  nothing  of  the  kind,"  said 
the  Dean  sharply. 

But  the  attorney  went  swiftly  on: 

"We  have  shown  that  the  defendant,  intent 
upon  a  crime,  came  to  you.  You  advised  him. 
He  changed  his  purpose.  He  did  not  commit 
the  crime — at  that  time.  We  are  bound  to  as- 
sume, then,  that  you  were  cognizant  of  his  intent 
and  that  through  your  influence  the  crime  was — 
postponed." 

"Your  assumptions  have  no  place  in  a  court  of 
justice,"  said  the  Dean  warmly.  "I  have  told 
you  that  our  conversation  had  no  bearing  what- 
ever on  this  action." 

He  was  still  puzzled  by  the  attorney's  line  of 
questions  and  presumptions. 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  STRONG    321 

"This  prisoner  is  an  avowed  Socialist,"  said  the 
attorney,  leaping  to  an  entirely  new  line  of  de- 
ductions. "Being  a  professed  Socialist,  he  could 
not  be  a  member  of  your  Church,  could  he?" 

"  'My  Church,' "  the  Dean  said  evenly,  "has 
to  do  with  the  moral  law  and  the  faith  of 
Christ." 

"You  do  not  wish  to  answer?" 

"I  have  answered." 

"The  question  was  perhaps  too  broad,"  the  at- 
torney went  on,  unheeding.  "At  any  rate,  the 
prisoner  has  not  for  some  time  been  an  active 
member  of  your  congregation.  Your  friend- 
ship with  him  has  been  rather  personal  than — 
should  I  say — professional?" 

"I  do  not  understand  your  question  or  what 
bearing  it  has." 

"You  remember  the  night  of  the  day  on  which 
the  prisoner  was  arrested?"  asked  the  attorney, 
jumping  quickly  to  a  new  line. 

"I  remember." 

"You  were  in  the  Mohawk  County  jail  that 
night?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

"You  were  aware  that  the  prisoner  had  a  plan 
formed  to  break  out  of  the  jail  and  to  take  pos- 
session by  lawless  force — by  murder,  if  neces- 
sary— of  the  Milton  Machinery  Company's  plant 
and  of  this  town?" 

"I  learned  of  that  after  going  to  the  jail." 

"You  took  the  keys  of  the  jail  from  the  Sheriff 


322         THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

of  this  County  and  offered  the  door  of  freedom 
to  the  prisoner?" 

"That  is  partly  true." 

"You  said  to  him,  'If  you  go  out  from  this 
place,  you  take  me  with  you ;  if  you  do  this  thing, 
I  shall  have  the  responsibility.'  You  said  those 
things?" 

"I  used  such  words." 

"Now,  do  you  take  such  responsibility  for 
every  act  of  one  of  your  parishioners?  In  other 
words,  did  you  take  such  an  attitude  with  this 
prisoner  as  the  parish  priest  of  Milton,  or  did  you 
do  so  because  there  was  an  intimate  personal  re- 
lationship, friendship,  and  understanding  be- 
tween you  and  this  prisoner?" 

"What  I  did,  I  did  as  a  priest  of  God,  to  avert 
bloodshed." 

"The  point  is,"  said  the  attorney  quickly, 
"that  you  were  able  to  do  it.  It  goes  to  prove 
that  your  influence  over  this  prisoner  was  at  all 
times  paramount,  all-powerful. 

"Here  he  was,"  Winters  declaimed,  "on  one 
occasion  going  directly  to  the  commission  of  a 
crime  which  we  are  proving  he  did  later  commit. 
Advice  from  you  turned  him  aside.  Here  he 
was  on  another  occasion  ready  to  walk  tri- 
umphantly out  of  jail  and  start  a  miniature  civil 
war.  A  few  words  from  you  turned  him  back. 
His  whole  course  of  action  during  this  entire 
trouble  has  been  largely  guided  by  you.  Wit- 
ness the  fact  that  in  the  very  jail  you  prevented 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  STRONG    323 

him  from  a  murderous  attack  upon  Mr.  Sar- 
gent! 

"Can  you  expect  any  reasoning  community  to 
beb'eve  that  you  have  not  been  part  and  parcel 
of  his  acts?  Has  he  not  come  to  you?  Have 
you  not  stood  at  his  elbow?  Has  not  your  will, 
your  advice,  dominated  him  at  every  turn?" 

Loyd's  counsel  was  on  his  feet  protesting 
madly. 

''Your  Honor,  this  is  an  outrage!  It  is  an  in- 
famous abuse  of  privilege!  This  witness  is  not 
here  to  be  tried  for — " 

The  judge  rapped  sharply  and  rebuked  him. 

"Mr.  Morgan,  you  are  to  remember  that  this 
witness  is  here  for  the  prosecution.  It  is  not 
your  part  to  protect  him." 

"My  position,"  Winters  continued  to  the 
Dean,  "as  District  Attorney  of  this  County,  im- 
pels me  to  advise  you  that  you  have  come  dan- 
gerously near  to  what  might  look  like  com — " 

"Sir,  is  that  a  threat?"  The  old  priest  towered 
up  to  the  full  of  his  great  height,  his  strong  white 
locks  of  hair  flung  back  in  indignation. 

"Well,  sir,  let  it  be  a  threat,  then.  Let  it 
stand  as  a  threat,  and  I  will  match  it.  I  will  say 
that  I  am  responsible  for  Jimmie  Loyd.  I  will 
say  that  I  answer  for  the  things  that  he  has  done. 
I  will  say  that  I  am  proud  to  have  stood  at  his 
elbow!  I  will  go  farther:  I  will  say  that  I  would 
not  be  afraid  or  ashamed  to  stand  where  he 
stands!  I  will  say  more!"  he  went  on,  his  voice 


324        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

booming  above  the  feeble  rapping  of  the  judge's 
gavel.  "I  will  say  to  this  judge  upon  the  sacred 
bench  of  justice,  I  will  say  to  these  sworn  jurors, 
I  will  say  to  this  community,  to  this  County  of 
Mohawk,  I  will  say  that  if  James  Loyd  be  con- 
victed of  this  thing,  then  it  is  not  he  who  will  be 
convicted!  Rather,  it  will  be  this  judge  upon 
the  bench,  these  jurors  in  the  box,  the  citizens  of 
this  county,  we,  all  of  us,  we  it  is  who  will  be 
convicted,  because  we  live  here  and  allow  these 
things  to  be  possible!" 

In  the  dead,  breathless  silence  that  followed, 
Winters'  voice  came  out  like  an  explosion: 

"The  witness  is  excused." 

The  Dean  stepped  down  heavily,  and,  pausing 
only  for  one  quick,  quiet  look  at  Loyd,  he  made 
his  way  to  the  door,  and  started  up  Court  Street 
toward  home.  He  was  shaken,  and  he  was  not 
at  ease  with  himself.  He  had  done  no  good,  he 
told  himself,  with  his  dramatics.  And  Winters, 
he  saw  now,  had  accomplished  the  very  thing  that 
he  had  set  out  to  do.  He  saw  now  the  hand  of 
John  Sargent. 

It  would  make  no  difference  in  Milton,  of 
course.  But  Jim  Loyd's  case  was  already  re- 
ceiving a  lot  of  space  in  the  New  York  papers, 
and  he  realized  what  they  would  look  like  to- 
morrow morning,  when  they  would  have  garbled 
up  Winters'  assumptions  and  his  own  answers 
into  testimony  and  evidence.  Reporters  would 
be  besieging  the  bishop's  door  before  noon  to- 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  STRONG    325 

morrow.  And,  next  to  sin,  the  bishop  hated  sen- 
sation above  all  things. 

He  saw  that  a  shrewd  man,  a  man  shrewder 
even  than  John  Sargent,  had  suggested  this. 
But  he  did  not  know  that  so  great  and  so  shrewd 
a  man  as  Jasper  Macon,  the  wiliest  and  boldest 
strategist  in  all  America,  had  thrown  the  stone 
that  had  landed  in  his  pond. 

He  had  no  fear  of  reproof  from  the  bishop. 
No,  that  was  perhaps  the  worst  of  it ;  the  bishop 
would  sorrowfully  ignore  the  whole  matter,  giv- 
ing no  chance  for  explanation  or  understanding. 

And  people,  so  many  people  through  the  coun- 
try would  misread  and  misunderstand. 

It  was  Christmas  Eve.  John  Sargent  was 
preparing  his  Christmas  presents.  It  was  going 
to  be  a  green  Christmas.  A  week  of  untimely 
warm  weather  and  rains  had  taken  away  the 
snow,  leaving  sodden  fields  and  blaqk  hillsides 
and  mud,  lakes  of  ugly,  indecent  mud.  A  green 
Christmas  is  a  gray  Christmas,  a  dreary,  chilling, 
dampening  season  of  forced  cheer.  The  old  peo- 
ple say  that  it  makes  a  full  churchyard.  It  is 
never  welcome  with  us  in  the  North  country. 

It  looked  in  loweringly  upon  John  Sargent 
where  he  sat  in  his  private  office  in  the  Milton 
Machinery  Company's  plant  going  over  the 
things  that  he  had  arranged  for  his  Christmas 
greeting  to  various  people. 

First,   there   was   a   bulky  package,   heavily 


326        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

sealed  and  covered  with  stamps,  addressed  to  the 
office  of  the  Attorney  General  of  the  United 
States.  It  was  filled  with  records,  affidavits, 
certified  copies,  rescripts,  and  documents,  legal 
and  illegal.  These  papers  covered  the  doings, 
written  and  unwritten,  of  the  International 
Farm  Machine  Company  during  the  five  years 
since  its  organization. 

That  corporation  had  recently  come  under  the 
scrutiny  of  the  Attorney  General  in  the  matter  of 
certain  rather  flagrant  violations  of  the  laws  of 
interstate  commerce.  The  Government  had  in- 
stituted a  suit  looking  to  the  dissolution  of  the 
corporation. 

That  corporation  and  its  banker,  Jasper  Ma- 
con,  had  some  time  ago  tried  to  ruin  John  Sar- 
gent— and  that  just  at  a  time  when  he  was  at 
death  grips  with  his  employees  and  with  the  Gov- 
ernor of  the  State.  He  had  considered  it  very 
unsportsmanlike  and  unkind  rivalry.  By  way 
of  a  Christmas  present  to  the  International,  he 
was  now  sending  to  the  Attorney  General,  for  his 
suit  against  that  corporation,  documentary  evi- 
dence sufficient,  if  properly  handled,  to  dissolve 
into  atoms  any  corporation  existing. 

Also  by  way  of  Christmas  present  to  the  In- 
ternational and  to  Jasper  Macon,  he  was  sending 
out  to  his  agents  everywhere  detailed  selling  or- 
ders, so  that  they  might,  at  the  critical  moment 
of  the  suit  against  the  International,  dump  upon 
the  markets  of  this  country  and  Europe  great 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  STRONG    327 

quantities  of  farming  machinery.  The  result  of 
this  would  be  that  they  would  undersell  the  In- 
ternational into  practical  bankruptcy.  He  could 
not  hurt  Jasper  Macon  personally  very  much. 
But  he  believed  that  his  Christmas  present  to 
Jasper  Macon's  pet  combine,  the  International, 
would  be  its  death  warrant. 

Through  the  District  Attorney,  Winters,  he 
had  already  presented  his  Christmas  greeting  to 
"that  old  priest,"  the  Dean  of  Milton.  The 
Dean  had  received  it  in  the  trial-room  of  the 
court  house,  as  we  have  seen. 

Jim  Loyd,  he  was  confident,  would  receive  his 
Christmas  present  to-day.  It  would  be  in  the 
shape  of  a  prison  sentence.  It  could  not  be  for 
more  than  ten  years  or  for  less  than  three.  But 
Ichabod  Whitcomb  could  be  depended  upon  to 
make  it  nearer  the  former  than  the  latter. 

His  present  to  Governor  Gordon  Fuller  he 
had  sent  out  this  morning  in  the  form  of  a  state- 
ment to  a  group  of  Metropolitan  newspapers. 
In  it  he  had  told  the  newspapers  and  the  coun- 
try that  the  board  of  arbitration  which  the  Gov- 
ernor had  created  to  settle  the  differences  be- 
tween the  Milton  Machinery  Company  and  its 
employees  was  a  ridiculous  failure.  He  had  an- 
nounced his  refusal  to  be  bound  by  any  of  its 
findings.  And  he  had  told  the  country  confiden- 
tially that  the  action  of  the  Governor,  in  con- 
fiscating the  Milton  plant  at  the  time  of  the 
strike  and  putting  the  men  back  to  work  under 


328        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

martial  law,  had  been,  in  so  many  words,  noth- 
ing but  a  piece  of  political  bravado  and  dema- 
gogy which  the  Governor  had  known  he  could 
not  really  carry  out. 

That  completed  the  list  of  individual  remem- 
brances. It  had  been  a  long  time  since  John 
Sargent  had  remembered  so  many  people  at 
Christmas. 

There  were,  however,  nearly  four  thousand 
men  and  about  four  hundred  women  for  whom 
also  John  Sargent  had  arranged  a  Christmas 
greeting.  These  greetings  were  not  directed  to 
individuals.  They  were  in  the  form  of  notices 
printed  in  squares  of  white  cardboard,  in  plain 
black  letters.  About  a  hundred  of  tbese  notices 
lay  in  a  neat  pile  on  John  Sargent's  desk.  Be- 
cause it  was  Christmas  Eve,  the  entire  plant 
would  close  down  to-day  at  five  o'clock.  At  five 
minutes  to  five,  twenty  clerks  from  the  office 
would  hurry  down  through  the  various  rooms 
of  the  mill  to  tack  up  one  of  these  notices  on  a 
board  that  hung  beside  the  exit  from  each  room. 
They  would  be  read  by,  or  translated  to,  five 
thousand  people  in  less  than  five  minutes. 

John  Sargent  picked  up  one  of  the  notices  and 
read  it  reflectively.  It  ran: 

All  employees  of  this  Company  who  on  3 
May  of  this  year  voluntarily  left  their  work  to 
go  on  strike  are,  by  this  notice,  discharged  from 
the  employ  of  this  company.  Time  checks  may 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  STRONG    329 

be  presented   at   the  Manufacturers  National 
Bank  on  or  after  26  December. 

THE  MILTON  MACHINERY  COMPANY. 

While  John  Sargent  had  been  feverishly  driv- 
ing his  mill  to  double  capacity  in  an  effort  to  glut 
the  markets  and  undersell  his  enemy,  the  Inter- 
national, he  had  been  all  the  time  preparing  this 
Christmas  greeting  for  his  old  employees. 

He  had  finally  come  to  the  conclusion  that  his 
father's  policy,  and  his  own,  had  been  a  mistake. 
Once  it  may  have  been  the  part  of  wisdom  to  let 
the  people  take  root  in  Milton,  to  let  them  own 
homes  and  thus  bind  them  to  the  town  and  the 
mill.  But  it  did  not  seem  to  be  so  now.  It  gave 
them  the  power  to  sustain  a  long  strike.  And  in 
these  days  of  fierce  competition  a  long  strike  was 
too  disastrous.  What  was  worse,  their  feeling  of 
independence  and  their  increasing  education 
made  them  ready  to  invite  government  interfer- 
ence. The  more  prosperous  and  advanced  the 
town  was,  the  more  noise  it  could  make.  And 
wherever  there  was  noise  and  agitation  there  was 
sure  to  rise  up  some  notoriety-seeking  official 
with  a  thirst  to  interfere. 

So  he  had  crowded  his  mill  up  with  almost 
double  the  number  of  men  and  women  that  he 
would  use  when  he  should  go  back  to  normal  con- 
ditions of  running.  He  had  trained  two  men  for 
every  job  requiring  skill  and  experience.  He 
had  trained  two  women  for  every  machine.  He 


330        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

could  drop  every  one  of  the  old  employees,  below 
the  ranks  of  the  foremen,  and  go  on  with  the 
new  men  at  about  the  capacity  and  speed  at 
which  he  had  formerly  run  the  plant. 

From  the  schedule  of  the  trial  of  Jim  Loyd 
which  was  now  drawing  to  a  close  up  in  the  court 
house,  he  had  figured  that  at  about  five  o'clock 
to-day  the  jury  would  find  Jim  Loyd  guilty. 
The  judge  would  pronounce  sentence  immedi- 
ately. He  had  told  Winters  to  time  the  prog- 
ress of  the  trial  so  that  Jim  Loyd  should  receive 
sentence  at  about  the  same  moment  at  which  the 
old  employees  of  the  Company  were  receiving 
their  sentences.  He  dropped  the  notice  on  the 
desk  and  went  out  and  down  through  the  mill. 

Down  in  the  power-house,  he  looked  out  over 
the  dark,  sullen  body  of  the  river.  The  great 
pond,  a  lake  almost,  stretched  broad  and  deep 
and  black,  away  for  miles,  into  the  heart  of  the 
hills.  The  Maker  of  the  Hills  had  formed  here 
a  great  and  ready  servant  and  had  given  man 
dominion  over  that  servant,  a  dominion  without 
hire  and  without  price;  a  servant  that  toiled  on 
unceasingly,  asking  only  for  more  work. 

John  Sargent  loved  the  glum,  silent  river  with 
its  millions  of  horsepower  lying  in  leash  there 
between  the  hills.  And  not  only  because  it 
worked  for  him  for  nothing:  he  loved  it  because 
it  was  dependable.  It  never  tired,  never  had  ex- 
cuse, never  failed. 

Up  out  of  the  wheelpits,  where  the  hands  of 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  STRONG    331 

the  river  worked,  came  the  shafts  of  steel  and 
with  their  elbows  of  beveled  gears  turned  the 
power  of  the  river  into  the  massive  main  shaft  of 
the  mill.  To  the  main  shaft  were  hitched  the 
fourteen  dynamos  that  turned  the  strength  of  the 
water  into  electric  current.  From  them  went 
out  the  slim  arteries  of  lightning  that  lighted  the 
furnaces,  that  turned  the  wheels  and  made  John 
Sargent's  mill  a  living  thing. 

Here  men  worked  quietly,  smoothly,  oiling, 
cleaning,  burnishing,  dressing  the  dynamos  for 
the  Christmas  rest.  John  Sargent  went  about 
running  a  critical  finger  over  polished  surfaces  of 
brass  and  copper  and  steel,  for  these  were  costly 
tools,  these  dynamos.  A  little  rust,  a  little  drip, 
might  easily  stand  him  the  loss  of  ten  thousand 
dollars. 

Satisfied,  he  climbed  a  ladder,  stepped  through 
a  door  in  the  wall  and  came  out  upon  the  run- 
ways of  the  furnace  room.  Here  all  was  fever 
and  hurry,  men  rushing  about  here  and  there, 
great  cranes  snapping  their  loads  jerkily  into 
the  air,  furnaces  flaring  up  to  the  leaden  sky. 
To  the  unskilled  eye  it  would  have  been  a  chaos 
of  undirected  fury.  To  John  Sargent's  grim 
eye,  as  he  took  in  the  state  of  the  room  at  a 
glance,  it  all  meant  that  every  man  was  hurrying 
so  that  all  the  furnaces  might  be  cleared  at  the 
stroke  of  five,  and  all  be  free  to  go.  "They 
wouldn't  jump  that  way  for  me  if  I  was  sweat- 
ing blood  to  get  them  to  hurry,"  he  muttered  to 


332        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

himself.  "Well,  they  can  rush  now.  A  lot  of 
them'll  have  plenty  of  time  to  rest." 

The  casting-room,  when  he  came  to  it,  was  one 
bank  of  impenetrable,  murky  fog  that  came 
crowding  in  from  the  damp  air  outside  and  that 
rose  from  the  sizzling  puddles  of  metal.  Only 
the  nearest  of  the  electric  bulbs  blinked  feebly 
through  the  gloom  and  showed  now  and  then  a 
black  head  or  a  naked  shoulder  as  some  man 
partly  emerged  from  the  murk.  It  might  have 
been  a  bottomless  pit,  with  now  and  then  a  rest- 
less soul  pushing  up  to  the  surface. 

The  milling-room  was  crowded  to  the  last  inch 
of  available  working  space  with  men  whose 
minds  and  bodies  seemed  keyed  to  the  single 
thought  that  they  were  to  handle  as  many  pieces 
of  iron  as  it  was  possible  for  human  hands  to  turn 
in  a  given  time.  They  were  piece-workers 
nearly  all,  trained  to  the  last  second  of  accurate 
speed,  and  ever  trying  to  crowd  an  extra  move- 
ment into  that  second. 

All  about  them  lathes  whirred  and  whined 
their  complaint  and  drills  shrieked  as  they  bit 
into  the  iron,  but  the  men  drove  on  silently,  meas- 
uring the  pieces  of  iron  that  they  drilled  and 
turned  against  the  racing  of  the  seconds  on  the 
clock. 

John  Sargent  disliked  this  room.  There  was 
too  much  hand-work  here.  The  eight  hundred 
clever,  high-priced  workmen  in  this  room  always 
irritated  him.  They  were  the  men  who  did  most 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  STRONG    333 

of  the  thinking  and  the  talking  for  the  rest  of  the 
mill.  Agitations,  committees,  delegations  with 
differences  and  complaints  generally  found  their 
brains  and  their  spokesmen  in  this  room.  These 
men  were  readers  and  talkers.  They  were  full 
of  arguments  on  the  cost  of  materials,  on  profits, 
on  the  value  of  the  labor  put  into  the  product. 

Their  work  was  almost  entirely  mechanical,  he 
argued.  The  motions  they  made  could  be  made 
just  as  accurately  by  machinery — and  faster. 
Why  could  he  not  clear  them  all  out  and  make 
machines  take  their  places?  The  trouble  was 
that  each  man  of  them  had  to  do  just  a  little  bit 
of  thinking  with  each  piece  of  work.  A  little, 
a  very  little,  but  it  was  just  that  little  bit  of 
thinking  that  a  machine  would  not  do.  When 
would  they  give  him  machines,  machines  that  he 
could  buy  outright  and  hitch  to  his  shaft,  that 
would  do  just  that  little  bit  of  thinking  for  him? 

There  was  little  Joe  Page  on  his  high  stool  at 
a  lathe.  Just  because  he  could  do  that  very  little 
bit  of  thinking  that  a  machine  would  not  do,  John 
Sargent  had  to  clothe  him  and  feed  and  bed  him. 

He  came  out  now  into  the  enormous,  open, 
sky-lighted  assembling-room  where  the  bed 
frames  of  the  machines  were  set  up  and  the 
"travelers"  came  hurrying  in  from  all  directions 
with  pieces  and  dropped  them  almost  magically 
into  place  in  the  frames.  This  was  what  John 
Sargent  loved  to  watch,  the  setting-up  of  the 
complete  machines,  ready  to  be  run  upon  the 


334         THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

cars.  What  man  does  not  love  to  see  the  turned- 
out  ready  product  of  his  own  hand  or  brain? 
Here  were  results.  Here  was  money  that  could 
be  counted. 

He  was  willing  to  pay  the  twelve  hundred  men 
who  worked  in  this  room.  He  did  not  begrudge 
it.  Their  work  was  heavy.  They  were  not  paid 
for  mere  thinking. 

Last  of  all  there  was  the  twine-mill.  Such 
daylight  as  there  had  been  was  gone  now.  The 
arc-light  sputtered  fitfully  up  and  down  the  end- 
less rows  of  machines.  Seven  hundred  women, 
ranging  in  years  from  fourteen  to  sixty,  stood 
here  in  one  barnlike  room,  bending  to  the  end- 
less nursing  and  feeding  of  the  insatiable 
winders. 

The  wooden  floor  under  their  feet  was  wet  and 
spongy.  The  air  of  the  room  was  filled  with 
cloudy  wreaths  and  spirals  of  condensing  steam, 
released  into  the  room  because  the  twine  fiber 
must  be  kept  damp  while  it  was  being  worked. 
Their  clothing  was  soaked  through  and  through 
with  the  mist  of  the  condensing  steam.  Their 
hair,  tightly  wound  into  unsightly  knobs  to  keep 
it  from  the  snatching  arms  of  the  winders,  was 
sprinkled  over  with  great,  glistening  jewels  of 
water  and  tar  vapor  from  the  spray  baths 
through  which  the  twine  was  run. 

Through  the  streaked  smudges  upon  their 
faces  ran  the  cruel,  bitter  lines  of  heart-breaking 
fatigue,  They  were  unlovely,  unsightly,  and 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  STRONG    335 

they  did  not  care,  Their  feet  were  swollen ;  they 
ached  in  every  nerve  from  the  endless  strain  of 
standing  in  one  cramped  position;  their  heads 
swam  with  pain  and  blood  congestion  back  of  the 
eyes;  but  their  nimble,  automatic  fingers  ran 
swiftly  in  and  out  among  the  hooks  of  the  wind- 
ers. 

Some,  the  stronger  ones  who  had  a  little  of 
strength  or  nerve  left,  were  racing  to  finish  a 
certain  amount  of  work.  But  for  the  most  part 
they  merely  held  on  blindly  to  the  pace  of  the 
machines  before  them. 

Across  the  room  from  John  Sargent  stood  a 
bent,  white-haired  woman,  her  hands  weaving 
steadily  in  and  out  among  the  clutching  hooks. 
There  was  nothing  to  distinguish  her  white  head, 
the  skin  drawn  drum-tight  at  the  temples,  or  her 
quivering,  thin  body  from  plenty  of  others  about 
her.  But,  somehow,  it  seemed  to  John  Sargent 
that  he  ought  to  remember  her.  There  was 
something  in  some  way  familiar  about  her.  He 
did  remember  her.  She  was  Milly  Ashley. 
Forty  years  ago,  he  remembered,  she  was  the 
prettiest,  sauciest  girl  in  the  old  Academy  of  Mil- 
ton. 

She  had  married  somebody.  They  all  do,  for 
some  reason  or  other,  he  reflected.  And  here  she 
was  in  her  old  age  down  to  this.  It  was  too  bad. 

As  he  watched,  the  woman's  hands  left  the 
winder  and  rose  gracefully  in  the  air.  She 
swayed  back  a  little  from  the  machine  and  waved 


336        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

her  hands  in  easy,  measured  gestures  to  the  time 
of  something  that  she  began  to  recite.  John 
Sargent  could  not  hear  what  she  said,  but  from 
the  gestures  and  the  even  motions  of  her  lips  it 
was  evidently  a  part  of  some  poem. 

The  girl  next  to  her  caught  the  raving  woman 
and  half  lifted,  half  dragged  her  out  to  the  safety 
of  the  aisle.  Nonie  Gaylor,  superintendent  of 
this  mill,  appeared  from  somewhere  and  directed 
two  stout,  elderly  women  to  help  the  woman  to 
the  dressing-room.  There  was  no  panic,  no 
shrieking,  no  disorder.  These  things  were  of 
common  occurrence.  John  Sargent  admired 
for  a  moment  the  efficient,  time-saving  way  in 
which  the  affair  had  been  handled. 

Then  Nonie  Gaylor  came  back  and  did  a 
strange  thing.  The  woman's  machine  was  still 
running.  Nonie  Gaylor  stepped  into  the  vacant 
place  and  went  on  with  the  woman's  work.  She 
had  been  doing  piece-work  and  the  few  pennies 
would  mean  something  to  her. 

John  Sargent  did  not  like  this.  The  Gaylor 
girl  should  remember  that  he  paid  for  her  time  to 
superintend  the  whole  mill,  not  to  run  a  single 
machine.  He  would  step  over  and  tell  her  so. 
But  just  then  a  boy  from  the  office  appeared  at 
his  elbow  and  began  tacking  a  notice  on  the 
board  by  the  door.  Sargent  turned  in  the  door- 
way and  went  back  toward  his  office. 

He  had  not  gone  twenty  steps  from  the  door 
when  he  heard  a  scream.  Anne  Casimir  had 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  STRONG    337 

slipped  over  and  read  the  notice.  Screaming 
and  sobbing  fearfully,  she  threw  herself  upon  a 
bale  of  twine  fiber.  In  an  instant  every  machine 
in  the  room  was  deserted.  This  was  not  merely 
a  case  of  a  girl  fainting  or  in  hysteria. 

Scrambling,  tearing,  pulling,  they  fought  their 
way  by  platoons  up  to  the  billboard,  howling  out 
the  notice  in  five  languages  to  those  behind. 
Some  one  tore  the  notice  down  and  they  jumped 
and  stamped  upon  it  in  frenzy,  while  Nonie  Gay- 
lor  and  her  forewomen  tried  futilely  to  head  them 
back  to  their  places. 

A  stout  girl  grabbed  a  heavy  floor-mop  and 
swinging  with  all  her  strength  jammed  it  down 
into  the  rapidly  revolving  arms  and  clutches  of 
an  expensive  duplex  stripper.  That  was  all  that 
was  needed.  The  fierce,  leaping  fury  for  de- 
struction ran  over  them  like  a  driven  fire.  In 
two  minutes  the  room  was  a  wreck. 

In  vain  did  Nonie  Gaylor  and  her  forewomen, 
aided  by  a  few  thoughtful  ones,  herd  them  out  of 
the  room  in  droves.  They  rushed  back  to  their 
work  by  other  doors.  Then  the  power  went  off. 
Now  they  could  not  smash  things  so  easily.  It 
palled. 

With  one  impulse  they  rushed  pell-mell  and 
screaming  from  the  room.  Stamping  and  howl- 
ing they  trooped  down  through  the  mill,  through 
the  parts  where  no  woman  was  allowed  to  go,  un- 
til they  came  shrieking  into  the  big  assembling 
room.  Here  the  greater  part  of  the  men  were 


338        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

standing,  helpless  and  dumb.  Some  were  shout- 
ing foolish  and  half-hearted  threats.  Some  were 
frankly  crying.  Others  were  cursing  futilely. 
Like  a  raging  tornado  the  women  and  girls  came 
tearing  in  among  them,  shouting: 

"Do  something!  You  cowards,  do  something! 
We've  smashed  our  room!" 

"Why  don't  you  do  something!" 

"If  Loyd  was  here!" 

Loyd!  As  if  they  had  been  waiting  for  that 
word,  it  seemed  to  wake  the  men  to  life.  It  ran 
out  of  that  room  and  through  the  next  and  on 
down  through  the  whole  mill  like  a  cry  of  fire. 
Men  went  hurtling  over  each  other  out  of  every 
exit  of  the  plant.  In  twenty  seconds  the  mill- 
yard  and  the  street  outside  were  jammed  with 
a  roaring,  seething  mass  of  men  and  women, 
shouting,  chanting,  and  screaming  over  and  over 
the  one  word:  "Loyd!  Loyd!  Loyd!"  They 
knew  where  they  were  going  and  what  they  were 
going  to  do. 

In  the  court  house  the  trial  of  Loyd  was  being 
hurried  to  its  appointed  close.  The  last  witness 
of  the  prosecution  had  been  brought  forward  to 
strain  Loyd's  words  and  actions  to  a  proof  of  his 
guilt.  While  it  was  admitted  to  have  been 
physically  impossible  for  Loyd  to  have  been  near 
the  scene  of  the  explosion  of  the  stockhouse  of  the 
Sargent  plant,  yet  the  facts,  that  he  had  kept  ex- 
plosives in  his  possession,  that  he  had  apparently 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  STRONG    339 

intended  to  use  them,  that  he  was  of  a  violent  and 
terrible  temper,  stopping  at  nothing  in  his  anger 
— all  these  had  been  plaited  together  to  make  a 
rope  of  conviction. 

In  vain  Stanley  Morgan  had  entered  his  last 
monotonous  and  useless  exception  to  the  judge's 
rulings.  He  had  tried  to  show  that  not  a  single 
bit  of  real  evidence  had  been  introduced  bearing 
upon  the  actual  charge.  He  had  tried  to  go  past 
the  judge  and  get  at  the  feelings  of  the  jurymen 
through  their  sense  of  fair  play.  But  he  knew 
that  he  had  failed.  Those  men  had  been  put 
upon  that  jury  because  the  majority  of  them 
were  so  placed  that  they  would  not  dare  vote  for 
any  verdict  other  than  the  one  John  Sargent  de- 
manded. And  the  others  would  do  what  the 
stronger  will  of  the  majority  would  force  them 
to  do. 

In  his  summing  up  for  the  defense  he  had  ap- 
pealed to  every  American  sense  of  justice  and 
manhood.  He  had  shown  that  the  case  was  one 
of  flagrant  and  malicious  perversion  of  justice. 
But  as  well  might  he  have  talked  to  the  graven 
scales  upon  the  wall,  and  expected  them  to  tip. 

Winters,  concluding  for  the  "State,"  was  a 
marvel  of  skilled  and  hypocritical  moderation. 
He  did  not  denounce.  He  deplored.  He  was 
sorry;  he  was  pained.  But  the  facts  were  such 
and  such  and  such,  as  the  jury  had  seen.  The 
"State,"  he  said,  had  no  feeling  whatever  in  the 
matter.  Jim  Loyd  had  been  entitled  to  the  pro- 


340        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

tection  of  the  law  as  was  every  other  citizen. 
But  he  had  defied  the  law.  For  fancied  wrongs 
he  had  taken  revenge  into  his  own  hands.  And 
the  "State"  had  reluctantly,  almost,  seen  itself 
obliged  to  act. 

Through  all  this  Jim  Loyd  sat  grim  and  un- 
moved, his  eyes  and  his  mind,  apparently,  fixed 
upon  a  knot  in  the  floor  below  him. 

The  judge  in  his  charge  to  the  jury  did  not 
stoop  to  use  any  of  the  suave  duplicity  which  had 
marked  the  speech  of  the  District  Attorney. 
Ichabod  Whitcomb  was  a  blunt  and  brutal  man 
by  nature,  and  his  methods  were  coarse.  He  did 
not  confine  himself  to  instructing  the  jury  upon 
the  law  of  the  case,  as  he  was  strictly  bound  to 
do.  He  went  out  of  his  way  to  point  out  to  the 
jurors  lines  of  reasoning,  by  following  which  they 
must  properly  bring  in  a  verdict  of  guilty.  He 
so  construed  to  them  the  law  and  the  value  of 
evidence  and  the  force  of  the  particular  evidence 
in  this  case  that  there  seemed  nothing  left  for  the 
jury  to  do  but  to  find  the  prisoner  guilty. 

And  even  through  this,  the  contamination  of 
justice  at  the  fountain-head,  Loyd  sat  unblink- 
ing. He  was  waiting  for  the  very  end.  Long 
since,  he  had  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  Law, 
the  State,  Society,  Justice,  all  were  simply  names 
for  The  Will  of  the  Strong.  So  far  it  appeared 
that  John  Sargent,  with  the  things  that  he  could 
buy  and  command,  represented  that  will  of  the 


THE  WILL  OF  THE  STRONG    341 

strong.  Well,  he  would  see  this  farce  to  the  end, 
and  then — and  then  he  would  see  farther. 

In  the  jury-room  on  the  first  ballot  the  vote 
was  nine  for  conviction,  three  for  acquittal.  The 
nine  went  to  work  upon  the  three.  In  the  sec- 
ond hallot  the  vote  was  eleven  for  conviction, 
one  for  acquittal.  A  little  druggist  from  Green- 
ville was  holding  out.  Before  the  next  ballot 
was  formally  taken,  he,  too,  had  given  in  to  the 
will  of  the  majority. 

The  jury  filed  solemnly  back  to  their  places  in 
the  trial-room. 

"Gentlemen  of  the  jury,"  came  the  traditional 
query  from  the  bench,  "have  you  reached  a  ver- 
dict?" 

"We  have." 

But  Jim  Loyd  was  not  listening.  From  down 
the  street  there  came  to  his  ears  a  many-throated 
roar,  the  roar  of  a  multitude  of  men  in  rage, 
pierced  thinly  by  the  shrill,  high  cries  of  women. 
He  was  listening  to  that. 

"What  is  your  verdict?  Is  the  prisoner  guilty 
or  not  guilty?" 

But  Jim  Loyd  did  not  wait  to  hear  the  single 
word.  He  quietly  snubbed  the  wrist  chain  across 
the  railing,  vaulted  the  rail  in  a  spring,  and, 
bringing  his  whole  weight  down  upon  his  fore- 
arm as  a  lever,  snapped  the  chain.  Three  steps 
on  the  floor,  and  he  was  surrounded  by  a  dozen 
men  who  had  leaped  forward  at  his  first  motion. 


The  jail  guard  drew  his  revolver  and  fired 
once,  in  the  air.  It  would  have  been  murder  to 
have  fired  indiscriminately  into  the  crowd.  Jim 
Loyd  was  already  covered,  swallowed  up  in  a 
whirling,  crashing,  irresistible  mass  of  men  strug- 
gling toward  the  doors.  In  another  moment  he 
was  out  in  the  street,  the  center  and  the  master 
of  four  thousand  raging  men. 

He  was  going  to  see  whose  was  The  Will  of 
the  Strong. 


CHAPTER  XIV 
AS  GOD  MADE  HIM 

WITH  head  bared  to  the  drizzle  of  the  raw, 
misty  evening  Jim  Loyd  stood  in  the 
street  in  front  of  the  court  house.  His  big  shoul- 
ders heaved  above  the  heads  of  the  smaller  men 
about  him,  as  his  lungs  gulped  in  great  panting 
breaths  of  the  air  of  freedom  which  they  had  not 
known  for  months. 

He  looked  back  at  the  court  house  from  which 
he  had  just  come.  It  was  the  place  of  justice. 
It  stood  for  the  community.  It  represented  the 
State.  It  was  the  stronghold  of  Society. 

In  there  men  had  found  him  guilty  of  a  crime 
against  Society  which  he  had  not  committed. 
Justice,  as  they  called  it,  had  gone  out  of  its  way 
to  deprive  him  of  his  liberty,  to  brand  him  as  a 
thing  to  be  shunned  and  walled  up.  The  State 
had  spent  its  money  to  convict  him.  Society  had 
decreed  that  he  was  not  fit  for  Society. 

Society  had  tried  and  found  him  guilty.  But 
Society  had  not  given  him  a  fair  trial. 

On  the  other  hand,  during  the  months  in  jail 
and  the  days  in  the  courtroom,  during  his  whole 
life,  in  fact,  he  had  given  Society  an  absolutely 
fair  trial,  From  the  day  when,  in  his  first  pair 
of  trousers,  he  had  trudged  manfully  into  John 

343 


344        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

Sargent's  mill  to  begin  his  work,  right  down,  to 
the  instant  in  which  he  snapped  the  chain  in 
leaping  from  the  prisoner's  box  in  the  court 
house,  he  had  done  all  the  things  that  Society  had 
prescribed  for  him.  And  Society  had  been  un- 
true to  its  side  of  the  contract  with  him. 

He  had  found  Society  guilty;  guilty  not  so 
much  of  a  particular  offense  against  him,  but 
guilty  of  being  a  lie.  It  was  a  lie,  this  thing  that 
men  called  Society.  He  had  found  a  true  bill. 
Society,  the  State,  was  nothing  more  or  less  than 
the  will  of  a  few,  who,  being  rich,  were  strong. 

And  why  were  they  strong?  Was  it  that  the 
accident  of  their  wealth  gave  them  some  mysteri- 
ous power  over  the  many?  No.  It  was  because 
the  many,  who  were  the  truly  strong,  foolishly 
let  themselves  be  worked  and  herded  by  the  will 
of  the  few. 

Here  were  the  strong — four  thousand  strong 
• — ready  to  follow  him  anywhere ! 

They  surged  and  eddied  around  him,  shouting 
and  cheering  his  name.  They  had  turned  to  him 
in  their  hour  of  desperation.  They  had  come  to 
tear  him  from  the  grasp  of  the  law  that  they 
might  have  a  leader.  And  he  had  done  what 
they  might  have  expected  of  him.  He  had  not 
waited  for  them,  had  not  needed  them.  He  had 
flouted  the  law  in  its  very  face,  and  had  come  out 
to  meet  them.  It  was  just  the  single-handed, 
dramatic  sort  of  thing  that  they  would  have 
looked  for  from  him. 


AS  GOD  MADE  HIM  345 

Warden  Wheeler,  two  deputy  sheriffs,  and 
four  jail  guards  came  running  around  the  corner 
from  the  direction  of  the  jail.  With  shotguns 
held  stiffly  before  them,  they  prodded  a  lane  into 
the  crowd,  making  straight  for  where  Loyd  stood. 
In  front  of  the  seven  armed  men  the  crowd  gave 
back,  rapidly  at  first,  then  slower  and  slower. 
Finally  those  directly  in  front  of  the  guns  found 
that  they  could  not  back  another  inch.  They 
stood  stock  still.  The  seven  with  the  loaded 
guns  halted,  perforce.  There  was  nothing  else 
that  they  could  do,  short  of  drilling  a  path 
through  the  crowd  with  buckshot. 

Fred  Wheeler  was  a  brave  man.  He  had 
been  the  warden  of  Mohawk  County  jail  for 
fourteen  years.  No  prisoner  had  ever  escaped 
from  him.  Personally,  Loyd  was  his  friend;  he 
wished  to  see  him  at  liberty.  Nevertheless,  he 
was  going  to  fight  his  way  through  that  crowd, 
at  whatever  risk,  to  put  Loyd  back  in  jail.  It 
was  a  matter  of  course,  the  course  of  his  duty — 
his  business. 

He  jammed  his  gun  viciously  into  the  breast  of 
the  man  before  him  and  laid  his  finger  on  the 
trigger.  Only  then  did  he  see  that  the  man  was 
his  own  older  brother,  Martin  Wheeler. 

The  gun  wavered,  a  very  little.  It  was 
enough. 

Martin  Wheeler  struck  the  gun  a  quick  up- 
ward blow  with  his  open  hand,  and  sprang  in,  un- 
der the  arms  of  his  brother. 


346        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

Like  the  snapping  of  a  trap,  the  crowd 
crunched  in  upon  the  seven.  There  was  no  time, 
no  chance  to  fire.  One  gun  discharged  its  load 
into  a  man's  foot.  The  seven,  crushed  by  sheer 
weight,  their  guns  trampled  under  foot,  were 
rushed  and  hustled  back  around  the  corner  and 
pushed  into  the  jail  door. 

Loyd  stood  looking  on.  It  was  ridiculously 
easy !  Those  seven  men  represented  the  might  of 
the  law.  They  made  up  most  of  the  available 
force  of  Mohawk  County.  What  scarecrows 
and  things  of  straw  the  law  and  the  county  really 
were,  when  strong  men  put  their  hands  upon 
them  I 

The  crowd  came  reeling  back  around  him 
again.  But  there  was  a  change.  Loyd  was 
quick  to  note  it. 

The  crowd  had  done  something.  Its  blood 
was  rising.  It  was  feeling  its  strength.  It  was 
looking  for  something  else  to  do.  It  had  tasted 
its  own  power,  and  the  rage  and  desperation  that 
had  before  been  numb  in  it  was  boiling  to  the 
surface. 

The  doors  of  the  court  house  had  been 
slammed  to  and  locked.  The  judge,  jury,  and 
court  attendants  must  be  inside.  The  crowd 
surged  up  to  them  and  began  to  beat  upon  them. 

They  would  have  the  judge  out!  They  would 
string  him  up!  Where  was  the  jury?"  Mob 
them !  Fire  the  court  house !  Burn  it  down ! 

Loyd  saw  the  boyish,  silly  folly  of  it  all.    The 


AS  GOD  MADE  HIM  347 

crowd  would  simply  work  itself  up  to  commit 
some  vicious  thing,  to  destroy  somebody  or 
something.  And  then  its  anger  would  suddenly 
sputter  out.  Men  would  look  at  each  other  and 
slink  away,  by  twos  and  threes  and  dozens,  to 
their  homes.  Once  there,  they  would  climb  into 
bed  and  begin  to  shiver — wondering  how  they 
might  prove  alibis.  In  the  morning,  the  will  of 
the  few  would  reassert  itself.  The  law  of  the 
land — John  Sargent,  in  this  instance — would  be 
stronger  than  ever. 

In  that  one  bitter  flash  of  insight,  Loyd  saw 
why  the  will  of  the  few,  backed  by  tradition  and 
fear,  had  always  been  able  to  dominate  the  many. 
He  saw — what  John  Sargent  had  sneered  at, 
months  before — the  sort  of  tools  he  had  to  work 
with. 

But  he  went  swiftly  to  work. 

His  own  men,  the  men  who  had  worked  under 
him  and  with  him,  in  the  mill  and  during  the 
strike,  stood  close  about  him,  wondering  why  he 
had  not  made  a  .move.  These  were  men  whom  he 
could  trust,  men  whom  he  had  seen  tried  and 
grilled  in  many  ways. 

His  orders  were  short  and  simple.  Four  men 
would  take  possession  of  each  of  the  two  tele- 
phone exchanges  in  the  town.  They  were  not  to 
touch  a  wire  or  interfere  with  messages  coming 
in.  But  they  were  to  see  that  no  message  of  any 
kind  went  out  from  the  town  during  the  night, 
or  until  they  were  relieved. 


348        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

Others  would  do  the  same  at  the  Western 
Union  offices. 

"A  little  time  is  all  I  want,"  he  said.  "The 
Sheriff' 11  be  yelling  to  Albany  for  help,  just  as 
soon  as  his  teeth  stop  rattling.  On  the  run! 
Quick!" 

The  men  broke  through  the  crowd  and  started 
for  their  posts. 

To  others  he  snapped  out  short,  curt  com- 
mands : 

"Break  them  fools  away  from  the  court  house 
doors.  They  think  they  want  a  bonfire !  Start 
them  moving,  and  keep  them  moving — after  me." 

Without  another  word,  or  even  a  look  at  the 
crowd,  he  pushed  out  into  the  middle  of  the  street 
and  started  toward  State  Street. 

The  effect  upon  the  crowd — if  he  had  looked 
to  see  it — might  well  have  turned  his  head.  His 
lieutenants  dove  into  the  crowd  around  the  court 
house  doors,  banging  men  and  women  right  and 
left,  and  shouting  his  commands.  But  the  crowd 
did  not  need  any  such  measures.  At  the  one 
word — that  it  was  an  order  from  Loyd — the 
hysteria  of  destruction  that  had  been  mounting 
up  in  the  men  fell  from  them.  They  turned 
sharply  and  faced  solidly  down  the  street  after 
their  leader.  The  women  stopped  their  scream- 
ing and  hurried  along  quietly. 

From  a  headless,  senseless  mob,  the  crowd  had 
become,  on  the  instant,  an  army  of  quiet,  devoted 
men.  They  had  a  purpose,  a  work  to  be  done. 


AS  GOD  MADE  HIM  349 

The  women  quickly  sensed  the  change  that  had 
come  over  the  men.  There  were  things  to  be  done 
by  the  men,  in  the  ways  of  men.  The  women 
seemed  to  realize  that  they  would  be  of  little  use 
now.  All  but  the  boldest  and  strongest  of  them 
dropped  unnoticed  from  the  crowd  and  went  to 
their  homes. 

The  men,  four  wide  on  the  broad  sidewalks 
under  the  elms,  thirty  wide  from  curb  to  curb  of 
the  widened  street,  crowded  swiftly  ahead.  They 
stretched  across  four  or  five  deep  in  front  of 
Loyd,  a  hundred  or  more  deep  behind  him,  a 
compact  column  of  nearly  four  thousand  silent, 
grim-faced  men. 

Loyd  had  heard  how,  just  at  the  moment  of 
shutting  down  the  mill  for  Christmas,  John  Sar- 
gent had  discharged  all  of  his  old  employees  at  a 
sweep.  There  were  other  men  in  the  town,  the 
new  workmen,  whom  Sargent  had  brought  in 
since  the  strike,  and  whom  Loyd  did  not  know. 
But  he  had  no  trouble  from  these  latter. 

During  the  long  months  that  he  had  paced 
his  little  cell  in  the  jail,  he  had  worked  out  every 
possible  detail  and  angle  of  this  night's  work, 
even  to  the  individual  men  whom  he  should 
choose  for  each  piece  of  the  work. 

He  would  have  no  rioting.  He  would  give  no 
chance  for  plunder  or  window-smashing  or  any 
of  the  things  that  men  expected  when  a  mob  went 
loose.  He  was  going  about  the  business  with 
none  of  the  hot  rage  that  would  have  hurried  him 


350        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

into  it  three  months  ago.  Then  he  would  have 
been  the  wild  leader  of  a  wild,  unthinking  crowd 
of  men.  Now  he  was  the  leader  of  an  appointed 
army,  moving  toward  a  definite  object.  It  was 
an  avenging  army,  to  be  sure.  For  John  Sar- 
gent must  die — there  was  no  other  way.  He  saw 
it  now. 

But,  that  done — John  Sargent  once  removed, 
his  army  was  an  army  not  of  destruction  but  of 
accomplishment. 

He  knew  that  other  men  had  started  on  the 
path  that  he  was  taking.  He  knew  that  mobs 
had  risen  and  had  seemed  to  be  supreme,  plenty 
of  times.  And  he  knew  why  they  had  failed. 
Their  leaders  had  allowed  them  to  waste  their 
strength  in  furies  of  destruction  and  revenge. 

John  Sargent  must  die.  Yes.  He  saw  that 
this  would  be  inevitable.  But  it  must  end  there! 
Things  must  go  on.  The  mill  and  the  work  must 
go  on.  The  town  must  not  be  harmed.  They 
were  simply  going  to  put  the  will  of  the  real 
strong,  the  will  of  themselves,  in  the  place  of  the 
will  of  John  Sargent.  It  would  be  merely  a 
change  of  rulers.  Nothing  else  should  be 
changed. 

They  swung  solidly  around  the  corner  in  to  the 
broad  stretch  of  State  Stret.  A  single  police- 
man standing  at  the  corner  was  brushed  lightly 
into  the  door  of  a  store.  The  crowd  scarcely  felt 
6r  noticed  him.  Loyd  wondered  for  a  moment 
why  the  police  were  not  already  out  in  such  force 


AS  GOD  MADE  HIM  351 

as  they  had.  The  Sheriff  surely  would  have 
called  them  by  now.  Not  that  the  thirty  police- 
men on  the  force  of  Milton  would  have  stopped 
his  march  for  an  instant,  he  merely  wondered 
why  he  had  not  already  met  them. 

In  front  of  the  Farmers  Exchange  Bank,  he 
stopped  long  enough  to  order  out  twelve  men, 
with  instructions  to  arm  themselves  as  best  they 
could  and  guard  the  bank.  They  were  to  allow 
no  one  to  enter  or  leave  the  bank  under  any  con- 
ditions. It  might  work  a  hardship  upon  the  two 
or  three  officials  who  were  probably  still  in  the 
bank,  but  he  must  guard  against  them  as  well. 
They  might  call  an  automobile  and  attempt  to 
carry  the  available  cash  in  the  bank  to  Herkimer 
or  Utica.  Loyd  was  determined  that  everything 
in  Milton  should  remain  as  it  was  and  where  it 
was. 

Coming  down  into  the  busy  part  of  the  street, 
where  the  larger  stores  were  grouped  along  both 
sides  of  the  way,  he  picked  out  men  right  and  left, 
one  to  take  his  stand  at  the  door  of  each  store. 
The  stores  were  to  be  kept  open.  The  street 
must  be  orderly  and  safe,  so  that  people  might  go 
about  their  Christmas  Eve  buying  as  usual. 

At  the  second  bank,  the  "Manufacturers,"  he 
halted  the  line  and  pushed  his  way  up  to  the  en- 
trance. This  was  the  bank  from  which  John 
Sargent  drew  his  payroll.  Loyd  knew  that  the 
men  whom  Sargent  had  discharged  had  been  noti- 
fied that  they  might  present  their  time  checks 


352        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

here,  after  Christinas  Day.  He  did  not  propose 
that  all  those  families  should  be  left  without 
money  for  Christmas. 

The  curtains  of  the  bank  were  down,  of  course. 
But  he  knew  that  old  Nathan  Fairchild  and  his 
clerks  would  still  be  in  there,  clearing  up  the 
heavy  holiday  accounts.  He  kicked  vigorously 
on  the  door,  while  the  silent  crowd  behind  him 
stood  and  wondered. 

First  he  heard  a  muttering  of  commands  and 
a  scurrying  of  feet  within.  Then  came  the  clang 
of  bolts  as  the  door  of  the  vault  was  slammed  and 
locked.  Finally  he  heard  a  slow  step  coming  to- 
ward the  door  and  the  curtain  ran  up.  Nathan 
Fairchild,  his  long,  cadaverous  face  looking  the 
color  of  wood-ashes  in  the  light  from  the  street, 
stood  peering  out  through  the  glass,  a  wobbling 
revolver  in  each  of  his  palsied  hands. 

"Drop  the  guns,  Mr.  Fairchild,"  said  Loyd 
coolly,  but  in  a  voice  that  carried  easily  through 
the  door.  "You  won't  be  hurt.  We  could  turn 
your  bank  inside  out,  and  you  know  it.  But 
we're  not  going  to  do  it.  You're  going  to  open 
this  door  and  let  me  talk  sense  to  you.  Do  you 
hear?" 

Old  Nathan  Fairchild's  hands  were  trembling, 
but  his  mind  was  working  swiftly  and  clearly. 
He  ought  to  shoot.  He  had  good  reasons  to  do 
so.  The  man  was  an  escaped  criminal.  He  was 
attempting  to  enter  the  bank  by  force.  The  mob 


AS  GOD  MADE  HIM  353 

out  there,  left  without  a  leader,  would  be  fright- 
ened and  break  up — perhaps. 

He  took  a  firmer  grip  on  one  of  the  guns. 
Loyd's  big  body  stood  full  up  in  front  of  the 
glass,  not  eighteen  inches  from  the  point  of  the 
gun. 

Fairchild's  mind  worked  on.  A  mob  without 
a  leader,  might — might  be  worse  than  a  mob  with 
a  leader. 

"You're  taking  no  risk,  Mr.  Fairchild,"  said 
Loyd  quickly,  keeping  his  eyes  on  the  eyes  of  the 
old  man.  "I  come  in  alone."  He  waved  his 
hand  backwards  at  the  crowd  of  men  behind  him. 
They  fell  back  instantly  to  the  edge  of  the  side- 
walk. 

That  move  settled  Nathan  Fairchild.  His 
whole  life  had  been  spent  bowing  to  authority. 
Here  was  authority.  He  opened  the  door. 

"Nothing  has  happened,"  said  Loyd,  as  he 
stepped  inside;  "nor  is  going  to  happen  to  bother 
you.  This  town  has  changed  hands.  That's  all. 
Just  now  I  am  the  only  protection  you  can  find 
in  this  town.  Do  what  I  tell  you.  You  will  be 
protected.  And  there'll  be  no  blame  for  you — 
afterward,  from  anybody.  I'll  put  a  guard  here 
strong  enough  to  protect  you  against  anything 
that  could  possibly  happen.  Keep  your  tellers 
working  until  ten  o'clock,  so  that  the  people  can 
cash  their  time  checks  to-night  if  they  want  to. 
Then  go  home  and  go  to  bed.  Your  bank  will  be 


354         THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

as  safe  as — as  it  was  last  night.  And — oil  them 
rusty  old  pistols  of  yours,"  he  said  grimly,  as  he 
stood  in  the  open  door  and  beckoned  to  the  guards 
whom  he  had  already  numbered  out.  "You 
could  be  locked  up  for  attempted  suicide." 

He  stepped  quickly  out  into  the  crowd  and 
started  his  army  moving  down  the  street.  He 
was  not  elated  with  the  ease  with  which  he  had 
so  far  accomplished  the  things  which  he  had  set 
out  to  do.  He  was  glad  that  it  had  been  so  easy 
and  simple,  but  he  knew  that  he  was  now  coming 
to  the  first  real  test  of  his  strength  and  his  power 
over  the  men  who  followed  him. 

State  Street  from  here  right  down  to  the  bridge 
was  lined  on  both  sides  with  saloons,  cheap  res- 
taurants and  cheaper  lodging-houses.  In  a  dis- 
tance of  less  than  three  short  city  blocks  there 
were  thirty-four  saloons.  John  Sargent  held  the 
license  of  every  one  of  them.  Through  them, 
aided  by  the  indifference  and  carelessness  of  the 
people,  he  controlled  Mohawk  County. 

Loyd  knew  that  he  dared  not  go  farther  until 
he  had  closed  every  one  of  these  saloons.  It 
would  be  madness  to  pass  them,  to  leave  them  in 
his  rear.  Before  morning  they  would  be  more 
of  a  menace  to  his  plans  and  his  men  than  would 
a  regiment  of  state  troops. 

It  was  Christmas  Eve.  Despite  the  fact  that 
more  than  half  of  all  the  men  of  Milton  were 
lined  up  in  the  street  behind  Loyd,  the  saloons 
were  full  and  doing  a  roaring,  shouting  business. 


AS  GOD  MADE  HIM  355 

There  was  excitement  in  the  air.  Loyd  was  ready 
to  do  something  big,  men  said.  There  would  be 
real  trouble. 

Loyd  saw  that  he  would  have  to  fight  his  way 
down  the  street.  It  would  not  be  easy  to  clean 
out  and  close  all  these  places.  He  feared  the  de- 
moralizing effect  of  the  fighting  upon  his  own 
forces.  But  there  was  no  other  way. 

"Break  into  gangs,"  his  command  flew  along 
the  line.  "Pile  into  the  saloons.  Throw  every- 
body out — drunk  and  sober.  Make  them  put 
lights  out  and  lock  up.  Quick!  No  noise  about 
it!" 

His  men  leaped  through  the  swinging  doors. 
Imperturbable  bartenders  and  sleek  proprietors 
demanded  to  know  what  the  "rough-house" 
meant,  and  reached  for  ready  weapons.  But 
when  they  saw  expensive  glass  and  fixtures  being 
ground  up  in  the  melee  they  were  glad  enough 
to  help  in  the  work  of  clearing  their  places  and  to 
switch  off  their  lights  and  lock  up. 

So  swift  and  sudden  was  the  onslaught  of  the 
men  from  the  street  that  the  first  block  was 
cleared  before  the  second  block  had  heard  what 
was  happening.  It  was  slower  and  more  difficult 
as  they  progressed  down  the  street,  for  as  each 
saloon  emptied  its  men  into  the  street  Loyd's  men 
soon  found  that  they  had  several  hundred  half 
drunken,  ugly  men  before  them  whom  they  must 
push  on  down  ahead  of  them.  Loyd  had  fore- 
seen and  feared  this.  He  did  not  want  trouble 


356        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

with  these  men.  But  there  was  no  time  now  for 
argument  or  reasoning. 

He  leaped  to  the  head  of  his  men  arid  where 
he  had  to  strike  he  struck  hard.  The  struggling, 
swearing  mass  of  men  in  front,  growing  con- 
stantly larger  and  heavier,  fought  back  viciously. 
But  the  press  behind  Loyd  came  rolling  down 
upon  them  and  they  were  slammed  and  jammed 
the  length  of  the  street  and  out  onto  the  bridge. 
Here  Loyd  left  them. 

Quickly  heading  his  men  up  River  Road  to- 
ward the  mill,  he  turned  for  a  look  up  State 
Street.  Every  place  was  closed  and  dark.  The 
street,  except  for  his  own  patrols,  was  deserted. 
He  was  satisfied.  The  town  was  absolutely  un- 
der control.  It  would  give  him  no  trouble. 

His  real  objective  remained — the  mill.  For 
half  a  mile  it  lay  stretched  along  between  the 
river  and  the  road,  a  shapeless,  dark,  sinister 
thing  that  took  life  and  gave  life.  He  had  not 
seen  it  since  the  night  when  he  had  picked  up  the 
dead  body  of  his  brother  lying  at  the  mill  gate. 
His  soul  and  body  shook  in  a  spasm  of  choking 
hate  at  sight  of  the  black,  formless  hulk  of  build- 
ings. He  could  tear  it  stone  from  stone,  girder 
from  girder,  and  hurl  it  all  down  into  the  chasm 
of  the  lower  river.  And  yet  he  loved  it.  Loved 
the  great,  brutish,  strong  thing  that  worked  so 
beautifully,  with  its  thousand  arms  and  its  mil- 
lion fingers  and  its  great  splay  feet  of  concrete  set 
in  the  solid  rock  under  the  river.  If  he  could 


AS  GOD  MADE  HIM  357 

have  owned  it  or  managed  it,  how  he  would  have 
nursed  the  hideous,  powerful  thing,  and  tended 
it  and  driven  it! 

And  there  was  Sargent  up  there  in  the  office, 
the  brain  and  the  will  of  it  all.  John  Sargent 
must  die  to-night.  There  was  no  room  for  the 
faintest  hope  that  he  could  be  overcome  or  that  he 
would  submit  short  of  death.  John  Sargent 
would  fight  on  his  own  threshold.  That  was 
sure.  Loyd's  orders  to  his  men  as  they  marched 
up  the  road  to  the  mill  gates  anticipated  that. 

"Leave  Sargent  alone,"  his  word  ran  down 
the  line.  "He  is  my  business."  And,  to  him- 
self, he  added,  "I'm  a  criminal  already:  I've  got 
little  to  lose." 

It  is  not  easy  to  see  to  the  full  what  was  in 
Loyd's  mind  at  that  moment. 

He  had  captured  the  town.  He  would  cer- 
tainly capture  the  mill.  And,  as  certainly,  he 
would  kill  John  Sargent. 

What  then?  That  would  be  to-night's  work. 
What  would  be  to-morrow's  ?  Did  he  think  that 
he  could  hold  the  town  and  the  mill  and  run  both 
indefinitely  in  the  face  of  the  power  of  the  State? 

Did  he  think  that  the  removal  of  John  Sar- 
gent, whose  will  had  always  been  the  will  of  the 
strong — the  actual  government  of  Mohawk 
County,  would  really  change  anything? 

Did  he  think  that  his  example  here  would  be 
the  signal  for  the  rising  of  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  mill  workers  in  New  York,  of  millions 


358        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

throughout  the  country,  to  seize  their  mills  and 
run  them  themselves?  If  he  expected  this,  or 
even  if  he  believed  it  possible,  then  we  could  un- 
derstand him.  But  it  is  not  likely  that  he  looked 
for  anything  of  the  kind. 

He  was  a  saturnine  man,  looking  darkly  upon 
things,  prone  to  see  failure  and  disappointment. 
He  had  no  illusions.  He  had  none  of  the  large, 
vague,  glowing  optimism  and  enthusiasm  of  the 
born  leaders  of  causes. 

No.  It  is  not  likely  that  he  expected  ultimate 
success  for  his  plan.  His  mind  was  quick  and 
clear  and  big  enough  to  weigh  all  the  forces 
against  him.  Probably,  as  he  marched  along  at 
the  head  of  his  men,  he  saw  that  the  plainest  re- 
sult of  his  plan  would  be  his  own  death.  But  he 
went  forward  as  a  man  goes  whom  fate  has  set 
upon  an  appointed  road.  Good  would  come  of  it 
in  the  end,  somewhere.  For  the  rest — his  way 
lay  before  him,  open.  He  would  walk  it. 

The  big  main  gate  was  locked  and  heavily 
barred.  He  drew  up  his  men  in  the  broad,  open 
space  in  front  of  it,  and  ordered  heavy  shafts 
brought  from  the  scrap  pile  to  be  used  as  rams 
in  battering  down  the  gate.  Within  the  heavy 
stockade  of  the  mill  there  seemed  to  be  neither 
sound  nor  stir.  But  Loyd  was  not  deceived. 
He  knew  that  John  Sargent  was  within  there, 
and  he  knew  that  he  was  not  alone. 

At  the  word,  twenty  men  on  each  side  of  the 


AS  GOD  MADE  HIM  359 

gate  ran  charging  forward  driving  the  shafts  into 
the  hinges.  The  lower  hinges  gave  in  with  -  a 
crash,  and  mingling  with  the  crash  came  the  sharp 
snapping  of  thirty  revolvers  through  the  loop- 
holes of  the  stockade. 

Loyd  now  knew  where  the  police  force  of  Mil- 
ton was.  It  was  lined  up  inside  the  stockade  of 
John  Sargent's  mill.  Milton,  its  homes,  its 
stores,  its  property  of  every  kind,  might  have 
been  swept  away  by  the  mob.  The  police  who 
were  paid  to  protect  it  were  needed  to  do  work 
for  their  overlord,  John  Sargent. 

Loyd  did  not  stop  to  see  the  effect  of  the  shoot- 
ing upon  his  men.  He  grasped  one  of  the  shafts 
as  it  came  driving  in  to  the  gate  again  and  threw 
his  strength  in  with  that  of  the  men.  That  side 
of  the  gate  went  down,  and  before  it  had  come  to 
the  ground  Loyd  went  hurdling  through,  yelling 
to  the  men  who  leaped  after  him : 

"Crowd  up  the  sides  and  smother  'em!" 

The  crowd  pouring  in  behind  the  leaders 
pushed  down  the  other  half  of  the  gate,  so  that  a 
stream  of  men,  ten  abreast,  was  soon  tearing 
through  the  gateway.  They  divided  and  swept 
along  the  fence  to  right  and  left  in  such  living 
torrents  that  the  police  were  rushed  off  their  feet 
and  hurled  up  against  the  fence.  The  policemen 
had  brothers,  some  of  them  had  fathers  in  that 
crowd  of  workingmen.  Also,  they  saw  that  they 
were  beaten  and  that  they  would  be  badly  ban- 


360        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

died.  They  dropped  their  revolvers  and  began 
using  their  clubs  merely  to  keep  themselves  from 
being  crushed  to  death  against  the  fence. 

Loyd,  seeing  that  the  police  were  now  harm- 
less, called  his  men  for  a  rush  upon  the  three 
doors  that  led  from  the  court  where  they  were 
standing  into  the  three  different  parts  of  the  mill 
that  abutted  there. 

The  main  door  of  the  furnace-room  was  on  one 
side.  The  milling-room  opened  on  the  other.  A 
long,  covered  passage,  wide  enough  for  six  men 
abreast,  ran  through  to  the  door  of  the  big  as- 
sembling room. 

Loyd,  shouting  to  others  to  storm  the  doors  on 
each  side,  grabbed  one  of  the  shafts  and  started 
running  alone  with  it  down  the  covered  passage. 
Fifty  men  followed  him,  running  to  pick  up  the 
trailing  end  of  the  shaft  and  help.  Running 
with  head  down,  he  had  gone  half  the  length  of 
the  passage  when  he  heard  a  roar  of  warning  be- 
hind. He  did  not  look  up,  but  he  heard  the  crash 
of  glass  ahead  of  him  as  a  dozen  magazine  rifles 
were  pushed  through  the  windows  beside  the  door 
toward  which  he  was  racing. 

He  felt  the  thud  of  the  other  end  of  the  heavy 
shaft,  as  the  men  who  had  been  carrying  it 
dropped  it  to  run. 

A  rush  of  wind  down  the  narrow  passage 
nearly  threw  him  from  his  feet  as  the  volley  from 
the  rifles  swept  past  him. 

He  gripped  the  shaft  again  and  charged  on. 


AS  GOD  MADE  HIM  361 

He  was  not  hit!  They  could  not  hit  him!  He 
was  Jim  Loyd !  He  had  work  to  do !  Until  that 
work  was  done,  the  bullet  was  not  made  that 
could  hurt  him. 

The  shaft  was  heavier  than  he  had  thought. 
But  he  was  going  on.  Men  behind  begged  and 
prayed  him  to  come  back.  But  he  was  going  on. 

Another  volley  came  whistling  down  the  pas- 
sage. But  this  time  he  was  braced  for  it.  He 
was  going  on.  A  tuft  of  hair  fell  shorn  from  his 
black  head.  He  was  going  on.  A  bullet  flat- 
tened itself  on  the  end  of  the  shaft  at  his  hand. 
He  was  going  on. 

The  door  that  he  was  running  for  was  sunken 
into  an  embrazure  the  full  depth  of  the  thick 
wall.  He  looked  up,  measured  the  time  for  an- 
other volley,  fell  upon  his  face  as  it  roared  over 
him,  gathered  himself  and  the  shaft  for  the  last 
short  run. 

At  ten  feet  from  the  door  he  was  fairly  safe 
from  the  rifles  at  the  sides.  With  a  mighty 
heave,  he  brought  the  two-hundred-pound  shaft 
up  shoulder  high,  and  with  short  quick  steps  ran 
lunging  at  the  door  with  it. 

The  shaft,  driven  by  its  weight  and  all  the 
power  of  the  man  behind  it,  shot  cleanly  through 
the  sheet-iron  facing  and  the  wood  of  the  door. 

The  big  door  stood  unshaken,  the  shaft  sticking 
from  it  like  an  arrow.  And  there  the  shaft 
stayed.  He  could  not  draw  it  back  for  another 
blowl 


362        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

He  tugged  and  pulled  and  strained  at  the  shaft 
trying  to  draw  it  out:  Strained  till  the  blood 
started  from  his  ears  and  nostrils :  Strained  till 
the  top  of  his  head  seemed  to  lift  itself  up  and 
float  away! 

It  was  fast,  and  useless ! 

Then  Jim  Loyd  forgot  himself.  He  struck 
and  kicked  at  the  iron  shaft  in  an  agony  of  help- 
less madness. 

Here  he  was  a  prisoner,  he  could  not  go  for- 
ward. To  go  back  was  useless  death.  Howling, 
he  threw  himself  upon  the  useless  shaft. 

Here  he  was :  Jim  Loyd,  the  strong  man,  the 
man  of  iron,  the  man  who  had  taken  a  town! 
Here  he  was,  helpless  as  a  puling  child,  listening 
to  the  shots  fired  into  his  scattered  men!  Sob- 
bing and  screaming  in  fury  he  beat  with  bare, 
bleeding  hands  upon  the  sheathed  door. 

Those  within  must  have  known  that  he  was 
alone.  It  was  a  mark  of  the  respect  in  which 
they  held  him  that  they  did  not  open  the  door 
and  try  to  take  him.  But  he  did  not  remember 
to  take  any  pleasure  in  the  compliment  they  paid 
him.  Just  then  he  had  forgotten  that  he  was  a 
man — he  was  trying  to  tear  off  the  iron  sheathing 
of  the  door  with  his  teeth. 

His  men  had  scattered.  An  army  could  not 
have  gone  down  that  passageway.  There  was 
no  blame  for  them. 

They  had  snatched  two  wounded  men  and  a 


AS  GOD  MADE  HIM  363 

girl  out  of  danger  and  then  they  had  faded  away 
swiftly  out  of  the  open  court. 

They  ran  along  under  the  dark  walls  of  the 
mill,  keeping  away  from  doors.  Along  three 
sides  of  the  milling  and  the  furnace-rooms,  they 
were  breaking  every  window  with  whatever  iron 
weapon  came  to  hand  and  piling  each  other 
through  the  windows  in  tangled,  clawing  masses. 

In  heaps  of  two  and  three  and  four,  they  spilled 
themselves  in  upon  the  floor  of  the  mill,  and  pick- 
ing themselves  up  in  the  dark  they  ran  craftily 
between  the  machines  they  knew  so  well  and  fell 
silently  upon  their  enemies. 

Men  with  deadly  guns  in  their  hands  were 
struck  down  and  stunned  before  they  knew  that 
danger  was  near.  Away  from  every  door  and 
from  every  stand  of  defense  they  drove  Sargent's 
guards,  until  they  had  herded  them  all  into  the 
casting-room. 

They  found  Loyd  unhurt,  at  the  door  of  the 
assembling-room.  He  gave  a  last,  vicious  kick 
at  the  shaft  that  had  put  him  to  shame;  and 
came  in  to  take  command. 

The  casting-room  was  a  ready-made  fortress. 
There  were  no  windows  in  its  walls.  Its  one 
wide  open  door  could  be  defended  indefinitely 
by  the  guns  of  the  men  within.  Its  roof  was 
open  but  it  could  not  be  reached  for  it  was  many 
feet  higher  than  any  other  roof  near  it. 

The  men  within  were  employees  of  a  nation- 


364        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

wide  so-called  detective  agency.  Their  business 
was  to  fight  with  guns  for  whoever  hired  them. 
Sargent  had  brought  them  here  one  by  one  and 
had  given  them  ostensible  jobs  in  the  mill.  None 
of  the  men  who  had  worked  beside  them  for  weeks 
had  suspected  them  in  any  way.  About  fifty  of 
them  were  now  drawn  up  behind  a  barricade  of 
castings  just  inside  the  casting-room  door. 

Their  rifles  were  of  the  best  and  newest  type. 
They  were  men  who  had  fought  together  before 
against  big  odds.  And  they  knew  that  they 
could  expect  no  mercy  if  they  were  beaten. 

Loyd  and  his  men  stood  in  the  darkness  of  the 
furnace-room.  They  were  beginning  to  under- 
stand the  nature  of  the  enemy  with  whom  they 
had  to  deal,  and  what  they  had  already  gone 
through  had  made  them  thoughtful. 

Not  a  light  had  yet  been  turned  on  in  the  mill. 
Loyd  and  his  men  preferred  to  trust  to  the  dark 
and  their  own  sure-footed  knowledge  of  every 
floor  and  obstruction  in  the  rooms.  The  guards 
inside  the  casting-room  evidently  felt  that  there 
was  light  enough  for  them  to  train  their  guns 
upon  that  one  door.  They  had  no  other  imme- 
diate use  for  light. 

It  was  a  deadlock.  Loyd  realized  it.  And, 
knowing  that  time  was  precious,  knew  that  he 
must  somehow  break  it.  But,  how?  Bravery 
against  that  ring  of  gun-muzzles  inside  that  door 
would  not  be  bravery.  It  would  be  senseless  and 


AS  GOD  MADE  HIM  365 

criminal  folly — like  his  own  maniacal  dash 
against  the  door  outside. 

The  slight  creaking  of  a  rope  overhead  told 
him  that  some  one  was  trying  to  do  something. 
A  whisper  came  through  the  dark  to  him,  that 
little  Joe  Page,  the  dwarf  and  one-time  circus 
clown,  had  found  a  rope  dangling  down  from  the 
car  of  the  "traveler"  which  ran  into  the  casting- 
room.  He  was  climbing  the  rope  up  to  the  rail 
of  the  "traveler,"  so  that  he  could  make  his  way 
along  the  rail  into  the  casting-room  and  get  down 
to  the  high  pressure  hose. 

Loyd  calculated  the  chances,  and,  in  the  dark, 
he  bowed  his  head  before  the  deliberate,  quiet 
bravery  of  the  little,  deformed  man. 

To  do  his  work,  the  little  man  would  have  to 
climb  forty  feet  of  swaying  rope.  Then,  hang- 
ing from  the  rail  of  the  "traveler"  by  one  hand, 
he  would  have  to  detach  the  rope  from  where  it 
was  fastened  and  coil  it  around  his  neck  so  that 
he  could  carry  it.  Then  he  would  have  to  go, 
hanging  from  the  rail  by  his  little  fourteen-inch 
arms,  hand  over  hand  a  distance  of  two  hundred 
feet.  Fifty  feet  of  that  distance  would  be  with- 
in the  casting-room  where  his  little  body  would 
show  against  the  open  skylight  of  that  room. 
When  he  came  to  the  proper  place — if  he  had 
not  already  been  shot  down — he  would  have  to 
attach  the  rope  and  let  himself  down  twenty 
feet  and  swing  in  the  dark  to  a  platform,  where 


366         THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

the  high-pressure  fire-nozzle  was  set  in  a  swivel 
ready  to  be  turned  upon  any  part  of  the  room. 

The  suspense  was  maddening.  Men  loved 
that  little,  malformed  man  with  the  giant's  heart, 
creeping  away  up  there  in  the  dark  to  an  almost 
certain  death.  In  the  dark,  it  came  to  them  that 
everything  in  all  this  world  depended  on  the 
little  fellow's  getting  through  safe.  You  will 
find  men  walking  the  streets  of  Milton  to-day 
whose  hair  is  gray.  It  turned  gray  that  night. 
But  they  will  tell  you  that  it  turned  gray,  not 
when  they  were  facing  bullets,  but  when  they 
were  standing  waiting  to  know  the  fate  of  that 
little  man. 

Loyd  started  them  to  making  feinting  rushes 
toward  the  door  of  the  casting-room.  Shouting 
and  throwing  pieces  of  resounding  iron,  they 
went  charging  up  along  the  wall  almost  to  the 
door.  Each  time  they  were  apparently  driven 
back  by  the  short,  stabbing  grunts  of  the  high- 
powered  rifles  and  a  hail  of  lead  came  spattering 
among  the  furnaces.  But  all  the  time  they  were 
cramming  themselves  up  closer  and  closer  on 
each  side  of  the  door,  and  every  flash  of  a  rifle 
was  blinding  its  owner  to  little  Joe,  and  giving 
that  little  man  a  better  knowledge  of  the  posi- 
tion of  his  target. 

The  swish  of  the  heavy  stream  as  it  caught 
the  guards  in  the  flank  and  lifted  them  bodily 
from  behind  their  barricade,  was  the  signal  for 
Loyd's  men.  They  tumbled  through  the  door 


AS  GOD  MADE  HIM  367 

and  fell  upon  their  enemy.  They  rolled  joy- 
fully into  the  water,  clawing  about  for  the  other 
men  and  crushing  them,  already  half  drowned, 
under  the  weight  of  their  numbers. 

At  a  flash  the  whole  room  leaped  out  into  bril- 
liant light.  Blinking  in  the  glare  and  shaking 
water  from  their  eyes,  men  looked  up  to  see  John 
Sargent  standing  at  a  door  cut  high  up  in  the 
wall  of  the  room,  his  hand  on  the  electric  switch. 
He  looked  down  at  the  wallowing,  half-drowned 
mass  of  fighting  men  upon  the  floor.  He  looked 
at  the  little  man  over  against  the  other  wall  busy 
with  the  hose.  He  drew  a  revolver.  And  be- 
fore any  one  could  shout  to  the  little  man,  John 
Sargent  shot  little  Joe  Page  through  the  head. 

The  dwarf  lifted  his  hands  in  the  old  salute  of 
the  tanbark  ring,  and  toppled  off  the  platform. 

With  one  hoarse  roar  men  threw  from  them 
the  prisoners  they  had  just  taken.  They  threw 
themselves  madly  at  the  door  of  the  room  and 
swept  out  through  other  rooms  in  a  rush  for  the 
stairways. 

They  growled  and  panted  and  fairly  whined 
to  be  allowed  to  get  John  Sargent  before  he 
could  reach  his  office. 

But  John  Sargent  was  ahead  of  them.  He 
stood  in  the  door  of  his  office,  pistol  in  hand,  as 
they  came  leaping  up  the  stairs,  Loyd  in  the 
lead. 

The  men  scarcely  noticed  that  one  of  the  first 
up  the  stairs  after  Loyd  was  a  recruit:  A  tall 


368        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

old  man,  with  a  cassock  drawn  up  to  his  knees. 
It  was  the  Dean  of  Milton,  Father  Driscoll,  who 
had  heard  the  shooting  just  as  he  was  stepping 
into  the  confessional. 

"Stand  back,"  shouted  Loyd,  as  he  reached 
the  level. 

"This  is  my  business !" 

He  circled  away  a  little  from  the  men  behind, 
so  that  they  would  not  be  in  the  line  of  Sargent's 
fire,  and  then  walked  straight  toward  the  man  in 
the  doorway. 

At  six  paces,  Sargent  fired.  Loyd  dropped  to 
one  knee  with  the  falling  of  the  hammer,  and  be- 
fore Sargent  could  move  his  finger  again  Loyd 
was  upon  him,  twisting  the  gun  from  his  hand 
and  reaching  for  his  throat. 

In  that  instant,  something  strange  happened 
in  John  Sargent.  Loyd  felt  it.  It  was  some- 
thing imperious.  Something  that  would  not  be 
denied.  Something  that  would  have  no  inter- 
ference. 

Loyd's  hand  dropped  back  nerveless  from  the 
throat.  He  felt  the  body  stiffen  on  his  arm. 
Again  he  put  his  hand  to  the  throat.  Again  it 
dropped. 

Father  Driscoll  stood  beside  the  two  men. 

"It  is  not  your  business,  Jimmie  1" 

Loyd  staggered  back  shaking  as  the  old  priest 
took  the  burden  from  his  arms. 

Afterward,  when  they  had  laid  John  Sargent 
on  his  cot  in  the  office,  and  Father  Driscoll  was 


AS  GOD  MADE  HIM  369 

working  over  him,  Loyd  plucked  at  the  priest's 
sleeve,  saying  in  a  choking  whisper: 

"I  tried.  I  tried,  Father.  I  had  my  hand 
on  his  throat.  Twice  I  had  my  hand  on  his 
throat.  And  I  could  not  do  it.  I  could  not  do 
it!" 

It  was  hard  to  know  whether  it  was  a  confes- 
sion of  sin,  or  a  confession  of  failure.  But 
Father  Driscoll  knew,  for  he  said  simply: 

"As  God  made  you,  so  you  are,  Jimmie.  You 
could  not  do  it.  No.  You  could  not." 


CHAPTER  XV 
THE  LONG  ROAD 

JOHN  SARGENT  was  dying.  Father  Driscoll  ad- 
*J  mitted  it  to  himself  as  he  bent  over  the  cot, 
loosening  the  tight  collar  away  from  the  swollen 
neck  and  doing  what  could  be  done  to  relieve  the 
pressure  on  the  brain  and  the  faintly  laboring 
heart. 

It  looked  as  though  the  spark  of  life  would  die 
out  slowly  into  darkness,  without  even  that  mo- 
mentary flash  of  consciousness  which  so  often 
comes  toward  the  very  end.  The  Dean  was 
praying,  as  he  worked,  that  this  would  not  be  so. 

He  hated  death.  With  all  the  warm  human 
grip  on  life  of  a  man  who  loves  men  and  is  loved 
by  them,  he  hated  death.  For  nearly  half  a  cen- 
tury it  had  been  a  large  part  of  his  life  to  stand 
at  bedsides  and  see  the  coming  of  death.  And 
always  he  had  fought  death  back.  He  hated 
death  in  the  night  and  in  the  morning,  in  what- 
ever form  it  came. 

But  that  death  should  thus  take  a  man  away 
without  a  chance  for  a  word,  without  a  look  back 
at  life,  without  even  a  word  of  human  kindliness 
to  take  with  him  on  the  way;  this  he  resented. 

John  Sargent,  you  could  say,  was  nothing  to 
him.  At  the  gate  of  the  mill  the  Dean  had  found 

370 


THE  LONG  ROAD  371 

two  of  his  own  people,  badly  wounded.  John 
Sargent  was  to  be  blamed  for  that.  Down  in 
the  casting-room  he  had  given  conditional  absolu- 
tion and  Extreme  Unction  to  the  little  half  man, 
whole  hero,  who  was  now  dead.  John  Sargent 
had  done  that.  But  he  fought  death  back  and 
prayed  that  John  Sargent  might  have  at  least 
the  pitiful  little  sacrament  of  a  kind  word  to  take 
with  him  into  the  dark. 

Doctor  Hamble  came  hurrying  into  the  office. 
At  sight  of  the  old  priest,  the  doctor's  left  eye- 
brow curved  upward  just  an  extra  trifle.  If 
there  was  any  bedside  at  which  a  doctor  would  be 
less  likely  to  meet  a  priest  than  at  John  Sar- 
gent's, he  could  not  just  now  think  whose  it 
would  be.  But  for  thirty  years  now  he  had  been 
meeting  the  Dean  of  Milton  at  bedsides  where 
one  would  not  have  expected  to  meet  a  priest. 
So,  he  went  swiftly  about  his  work. 

For  twenty  minutes  he  worked  quickly,  with 
the  sure,  vivid  touch  and  movement  of  a  man 
whose  hands  are  made  to  play  upon  the  pulses  of 
life. 

At  the  end  of  that  time,  he  turned  to  read  the 
speaking  question  in  the  Dean's  face. 

"No  response,"  he  said  simply.  "I  thought 
I  could  force  a  rally.  No  vitality  left,"  he  ex- 
plained. "An  hour,  perhaps,"  he  pronounced. 
"He  will  not  speak." 

The  two  men  stood  looking  down  into  the 
heavy,  discolored  face  on  the  pillow. 


372        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

A  faint  shiver  ran  through  the  inert  body.  A 
long,  sighing  breath  came  slowly  from  the  lungs. 
John  Sargent  opened  his  eyes. 

The  doctor  turned  swiftly  to  the  priest.  "I 
would  not  have  thought  it,"  he  said. 

John  Sargent's  eyes  roved  vaguely  over  the 
two  men  and  past  them,  refusing  to  come  to  fo- 
cus. Then,  as  if  at  a  click,  the  mind  took  its 
grip,  the  eyes  slipped  into  line,  and  John  Sar- 
gent, a  conscious,  clear-headed  man,  looked  up, 
first  at  the  priest,  then  at  the  doctor. 

John  Sargent  had  accomplished  most  of  the 
things  of  his  life  by  doing  the  unexpected.  He 
was  still  keeping  true  to  his  habits. 

For  a  little  time  he  made  no  attempt  to  speak 
and  seemed  to  pay  little  attention  to  the  two  men 
standing  over  him.  His  mind  was  working  back 
and  forth  over  the  gap  through  which  it  had  just 
come,  snatching  up  the  broken  ends  of  things,  so 
that  he  could  see  where  he  was — and  why — and 
what  next.  * 

It  took  some  time,  but  in  the  end  he  seemed 
to  have  found  out  all  the  things,  or  nearly  all, 
that  he  needed  to  know.  He  made  no  attempt 
to  move.  He  seemed  to  know  that  his  time  and 
his  strength  were  severely  limited.  He  did  not 
intend  to  waste  any  of  either. 

"How  long?"  he  asked  the  doctor  bluntly. 

The  doctor  put  his  forefinger  lightly  on  the 
stiffening  artery  just  near  the  hinge  of  the  jaw. 


THE  LONG  ROAD  373 

"One  hour,"  he  answered  simply.  "I  cannot 
promise — " 

"Plenty,"  said  Sargent  quietly.  Then:  "You 
have  done  everything?" 

The  doctor  nodded  his  head  slowly. 

"Then,  I  would  like  to  talk  to  this- — my  friend 
here." 

Again  the  doctor  nodded  and  walked  quietly 
to  the  door.  If  he  had  any  wonder  or  any  com- 
ment, he  kept  it  strictly  to  himself. 

"Where  is  Loyd?"  John  Sargent  asked,  as  the 
door  closed. 

"Out  through  the  mill,"  said  the  Dean,  "clear- 
ing up  things." 

"Um.  He  did  the  trick  at  last.  Wonder  is 
that  he  didn't  get  around  to  it  long  ago.  Still- 
still,  he  might  have  waited.  I  would  have  done 
it  for  him  another  way." 

What  was  this?  The  Dean  was  not  sure  that 
Sargent's  mind  was  entirely  clear.  But  he  said 
nothing,  and  set  himself  to  catch  every  shade  of 
meaning  from  the  man's  words. 

"But — no."  Sargent  went  on  slowly  and  re- 
flectively. "I  suppose  it  had  to  come  just  the 
way  it  did. 

"Did  Loyd— do  this  to  me?" 

"Thank  God!  No."  The  Dean  assured  him. 
"Twice  he  lifted  his  hand.  I  saw  it.  But  he 
could  not — he  could  not  harm  you.  God  was 
before  him." 


374        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"I'm  glad,"  said  Sargent  quietly.  "I've  never 
been  able  to  keep  from  liking  that  fellow.  If — 
if — the  One  you  speak  of — had  only  given  me  a 
son  like  him!  But — what's  the  use?  I  don't 
know.  I  don't  know. 

"He's  got  control  of  everything?"  he  asked 
abruptly. 

"Everything." 

"What  will  you  do?" 

So  far,  the  Dean  had  not  thought  of  what  he 
might  do.  Now  Sargent's  matter-of-fact  as- 
sumption that  he  was  the  one  to  do  something 
brought  the  Dean  face  to  face  with  his  problem. 
What  should  he  do ?  What  could  he  do? 

Jim  Loyd  was  walking  at  large,  in  defiance  of 
the  power  of  the  State.  The  Dean  knew  that 
most  of  the  men  of  his  congregation  were  organ- 
ized in  open  rebellion  against  the  law.  They  had 
tasted  their  own  power.  They  had  drunk  the 
strong,  maddening  wine  of  successful  lawless- 
ness. They  had  seen  their  dead.  They  would 
not,  could  not,  go  back  now.  Before  to-morrow 
night  soldiers,  thousands  of  them,  would  be  on 
their  way  to  Milton. 

As  his  mind  went  leaping  over  the  possibilities, 
the  answer  came  in  a  flash.  Without  hesitation, 
he  gave  it  as  it  came: 

"I  will  get  Governor  Fuller  to  come  here  to- 
morrow morning,  himself,  alone." 

Sargent  took  the  answer  and  turned  it  over 


THE  LONG  ROAD  375 

rapidly,  fitting  it  to  every  angle  of  the  case. 
Shortly,  he  said: 

"I  was  right.  I  always  said  you  were  the  wis- 
est and  shrewdest  man  I  ever  knew. 

"It  will  work,"  he  continued.  "Nothing  else 
would.  The  men  would  fight  five  regiments. 
With  the  Governor,  alone,  they  will  talk.  You 
are  right." 

He  settled  himself  slightly  on  the  pillow,  as 
though  he  had  settled  something  and  was  thereby 
relieved. 

He  lay  for  a  while  apparently  sunk  in  deep 
thought.  Then  looking  up  sharply  at  the  Dean, 
he  said  impressively: 

"Tell  the  Governor — tell  the  Governor  to 
leave  Loyd  alone  until  my  will  is  read.  Tell 
him,  from  me,  to  leave  things  just  as  they  are — 
and  keep  his  soldiers  away — until  my  will  is  read. 

"This  is  Wednesday,"  he  began  again.  "I 
shall  be  buried  on  Friday — my  secretary  has  all 
instructions — there  is  nobody  else.  They  will 
read  my  will  Friday  afternoon.  Until  then,  tell 
the  Governor  to  hold  his  hands  off  and  leave 
everything  just  as  it  is." 

The  Dean  did  not  understand  what  was  in  Sar- 
gent's mind,  but  he  answered  promptly: 

"He  will  do  as  you  say." 

"No,"  said  Sargent  with  a  flash  of  his  old,  grim 
manner,  "he  will  not  do  as  I  say.  But  he  will 
do  what  you  advise." 


are      THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"Then,  I  will  vouch  that  he  will  do  what  you 
wish,"  said  the  Dean  gravely. 

Sargent  was  silent  a  moment.     Then  he  said: 

"I  wish  you  would  send  Loyd  to  me.  And 
that  Gaylor  girl,  I  want  to  see  her,  too.  I  want 
to  see  them  both  together." 

The  Dean  knew  that  he  was  dismissed.  But 
he  was  loath  to  go  without  having  said  his  word 
of  human  kindness  and  understanding.  He  was 
saying  good-bye  to  John  Sargent  forever,  and  it 
was  not  easy  to  find  the  right  word. 

Finally  he  said  simply  and  easily: 

"Mr.  Sargent,  you  are  going  the  long  way  to- 
night. I  am  an  old  man :  I  go  that  way  pres- 
ently. I  would  like  to  have  a  word  of  me  go 
there  ahead  of  me.  What  word  will  you  carry 
concerning  James  Driscoll?" 

Sargent  looked  gravely  up  into  his  face  for  a 
long  time.  He  understood,  better  than  the  Dean 
had  been  able  to  put  it  into  words,  the  man-to- 
man kindness,  the  forgiveness,  the  faith,  which 
the  old  priest  was  trying  to  convey  to  him. 

"If  there  is  Anybody  there  to  listen,  I  will 
say,"  he  said,  "that  I  knew  one  man  who  believed 
in  God.  It's  about  all  I'd  be  able  to  say,  I 
guess,"  he  added  in  a  queer,  rueful  manner. 

"That  was  not  what  you  wanted  me  to  say,  I 
know,  Father,"  he  said  again.  "I  never  could 
say  it — the  right  thing.  I  can't  now.  Only: 
Thank  you.  And,  good-bye." 

His  nerveless  hand  stirred  a  little,  trying  to 


THE  LONG  ROAD  377 

rise  to  the  Dean's.  The  Dean  took  the  hand  in 
his  own  big,  capable  one,  and  gave  the  directions 
of  the  Road. 

"The  way  is  long,  sir.  But  God  Almighty  is 
at  the  end  of  all.  Believe  me,  He  is  there.  If 
ever  in  all  your  life  you  knew  man  or  woman 
whom  you  could  trust  with  everything,  with  your 
all,  then  trust  Him  now.  Keep  your  face  to  the 
light.  And- — God  be  good  to  youl"  he  said  in 
simple  reverence. 

He  went  out  to  find  Loyd.  Before  sending 
him  to  bring  Nonie  Gaylor,  he  told  Loyd  what 
he  had  promised  Sargent — that  the  Governor 
should  come  to  Milton  the  next  day,  and  that 
nothing  should  be  changed  until  Sargent's  will 
could  be  read. 

"He  is  a  dying  man,  Jimmie.  I  believe  he 
has  tried  to  put  things  right.  Maybe  God  is 
ready  to  show  us  a  way  out  of  all  this.  I  do  not 
know  what  Sargent  means,  but  I  pray,  and  hope, 
that  it  will  turn  out  right.  You  will  do  your 
part,  I  know." 

Loyd,  shaken  and  nearly  broken  by  the  things 
through  which  he  had  gone,  said  thickly: 

"Whatever  you  tell  me,  Dean.  If  you  say  the 
word,  I'll — I'll  walk  back  into  jail!" 

"No."  The  Dean  was  prompt  and  decided 
in  his  negative.  "That  would  not  do.  It  would 
not  be  safe.  Just  now,  you  are  the  law  and  the 
authority  of  this  town.  It  is  no  time  to  let  things 
slip.  When  the  Governor  comes,  deal  with  him 


378        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

direct.  Now,  call  central  and  tell  them  to  let  me 
have  the  Albany  wire  for  a  half  hour.  Then 
bring  Nome  Gaylor.  Mr.  Sargent  wants  to  talk 
to  both  of  you." 

When  he  had  gotten  his  message  through  to 
Albany,  the  Dean  hurried  back  to  the  church  to 
help  with  the  Christmas  Eve  confessions. 

Doctor  Hamble,  going  back  into  the  office, 
asked  Sargent  if  he  would  care  to  be  moved  any- 
where— to  his  own  house,  or  to  the  hospital. 

"No,"  said  Sargent,  "this  is  my  house.  I  live 
here.  I  die  here."  Then,  after  a  little  pause: 
"You  were  not  far  wrong,  Doctor — about  the 
time.  An  hour  is  short,  isn't  it.  Still,  I've  often 
done  a  lot  of  things  in  an  hour. 

"I  have  to  see  two  people  now.  I  hope  they'll 
be  along  soon.  I  always  hated  to  be  cut  short. 
I  want  to  ask  them  some  questions — certain  in- 
formation I  must  have,  for  use  on  my  travels." 

The  doctor  was  not  sure  that  Sargent  was 
quite  rational,  but  when  Loyd  and  Nonie  Gay- 
lor came  to  the  door  he  admitted  them  without 
protest.  Knowing  the  things  that  had  happened 
in  Milton  during  the  last  three  months,  he  ac- 
knowledged that  John  Sargent,  in  his  hour, 
might  well  have  some  things  to  say  to  these  two. 

Nonie  Gaylor  went  quietly,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  to  the  head  of  the  cot,  and,  kneeling 
lightly,  began  to  smooth  the  pillow. 

Sargent  looked  curiously  at  her  for  a  moment. 


THE  LONG  ROAD  379 

Then  he  turned  to  Loyd,  who  stood  helplessly 
looking  down  at  him. 

"Loyd,"  he  said  suddenly,  "do  you  remember 
the  day  you  told  me  I  would  die  of  fright,  fright- 
ened to  death?" 

Loyd,  unable  to  speak,  nodded  dumbly. 

"You  were  wrong.  I  wasn't  afraid  to-night. 
And  yet,  you  were  right,  too.  I  did  get  a  fright 
once. 

"I  was  in  Dean  Driscoll's  house  one  night. 
He  was  talking  to  me.  He  was  just  telling  me 
what  Cain  said  to  God  when  he  was  convicted  of 
the  murder  of  Abel. 

"I've  read  that  place  a  lot  of  times  since.  Do 
you  remember  what  he  said?" 

Loyd  stood  silent,  hardly  hearing  what  was  be- 
ing said.  Nonie  Gaylor,  instinct  warning  her  of 
what  was  coming,  was  weeping  quietly.  Sargent 
looked  at  her  an  instant,  and  went  on : 

"He  said,  'Every  man's  hand  against  me — 
every  man  that  finds  me  will  kill  me.'  Just  then 
I  heard  a  shot.  It  was  the  shot  that  killed  Harry 
Loyd." 

A  low,  stifled  sob  broke  through  Nonie  Gay- 
lor's  lips. 

Sargent  stopped,  listened,  then  took  up  his 
story  again: 

"I  went  down  the  street.  The  news  was  just 
coming  up  the  street,  that  young  Loyd  had  been 
killed.  But  that  was  not  what  I  heard.  All 


380        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

that  I  could  hear  was  the  cry  that  Cain  heard 
everywhere.  It  was  the  cry,  the  whine  coming 
up  the  street  from  the  throats  of  a  thousand  men. 
The  cry,  it  seemed,  of  all  the  men  in  the  world— 
in  full  pack — whining  to  kill,  to  kill,  to  kill  me, 
with  their  hands,  with  their  hands ! 

"I  ran.  I  ran  to  Benson.  That  was  twelve 
miles.  I  ran  all  the  way.  It  was  that  run  that 
caught  my  heart  to-night  as  you  came  up  those 
stairs.  I  knew  it.  So  you  were  right,  too. 

"I  was — I  am  frightened  to  death." 

He  stopped,  seeming  to  lose  his  hold  upon 
things.  But  he  caught  himself  and  spoke  briskly 
again. 

"Now,  I  didn't  bring  you  two  here  to  show  you 
a  lesson  of  poetic  justice.  That  was  just  a  way 
things  seem  to  have  of  happening  in  this  world. 

"I  just  wanted  to  ask  you  both  a  question  or 
two.  It  was  something  that  I  needed  to  know 
before  I  go — where  I  am  going. 

"Jim  Loyd,"  he  said,  speaking  loudly  and 
clearly,  "I  took  your  brother's  life,  indirectly,  of 
course.  At  least  I  was  the  cause.  I  tried  to 
ruin  your  life.  Finally  I  sent  you  on  your  way 
to  prison.  Now,  the  question:  What  do  you 
feel  toward  me?  Is  it  a  foolish  question?  No. 
It  is  not.  I  need  to  know  the  answer.  Where  I 
am  going — I  have  to  know." 

Loyd  was  stunned.  His  first  thought,  that 
Sargent  was  delirious,  was  driven  away  by  the 
imperious,  calm  assertion  of  the  man's  need.  He 


THE  LONG  ROAD  381 

had  to  know.  He  must  know.  There  was  no 
escaping  the  question  that  burned  in  the  man's 
eyes.  Loyd  did  his  best.  Nothing  but  the 
naked  truth  would  serve  those  eyes. 

"Three  different  times,"  he  said  simply,  "I 
tried  to  kill  you — tried  to  make  my  hands  kill 
you.  But,  as  God  forgives  me!  if  I  could  save 
you  from  pain  now,  or  where  you  go,  I'd  give  my 
hand  to  do  it." 

The  burning  eyes  searched  his  face  for  a  mo- 
ment and,  convinced,  turned  away. 

"Nonie  Gaylor,"  he  demanded,  "what  do  you 
say?  They  say  a  woman  never  forgives.  I  took 
love  and  the  best  of  life  from  you.  Do  you  dare 
say  that  you  forgive?" 

"God  gave  me  my  love,"  she  answered  stead- 
ily, "and  God  took  my  love  away  from  my  sight. 
If  I  could  smooth  your  way — where  you  are  go- 
ing— I  would  do  it  at  any,  any  cost." 

John  Sargent  heard  her  crying  softly. 

He  lay  quiet,  reflecting  on  this  thing.  They 
told  the  truth,  these  two.  He  had  wronged  them 
both,  irreparably.  And  they  were  ready  to  give 
him  back  kindness,  even  sacrifice. 

Now,  why?  Ah!  That  was  the  other  ques- 
tion. He  had  almost  forgotten  to  ask  it. 
Strange  that  he  should  have  come  so  near  for- 
getting it.  For  it  was  the  really  important  ques- 
tion. 

Yes,  that  was  the  question — why? 

He  must  ask  it  quickly.     He  must  have  the 


382         THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

answer.  All  would  be  clear  if  he  could  but  have 
that  answer. 

He  must  rouse  himself.  He  must  raise  his 
head  and  put  that  question  clearly  ! 

Nonie  Gaylor  saw  the  struggle  coming.  She 
slipped  her  arm  under  the  pillow,  so  that  his  head 
was  raised  a  little. 

Twice  his  lips  formed  the  word,  and  no  sound 
came.  The  third  time  he  spoke  it  strong  and 
clear  : 


Nonie  Gaylor  answered  softly  at  his  ear: 

"Because  God  and  love  is  all  there  is  in  the 
world!" 

Apparently,  John  Sargent  heard.  He  eased 
back  gently  on  the  pillow  —  dead. 

Loyd  fell  quickly  to  his  knees.  And  these 
two,  whom  John  Sargent  had  once  wondered  at 
for  praying,  prayed  now,  for  him. 

After  a  little,  Loyd  rose  and  went  to  the  door. 

Nonie  Gaylor  rose  and  put  a  little  handker- 
chief over  the  face  on  the  pillow.  Then  she 
crossed  softly  over  to  the  window.  The  snow 
was  falling  gently  in  great,  leafy  flakes.  Al- 
ready the  hills  were  white. 

It  would  not  be  a  green  Christmas,  after  all. 

John  Sargent  was  a  thing  of  the  past.  The 
heavy  snow  that  had  begun  falling  just  as  he  was 
setting  out  upon  the  "long  road"  was  already 


THE  LONG  ROAD  383 

drifting  above  his  body.  Of  him  there  remained, 
above  ground,  three  things :  His  mill  which  lay 
stretched  idle  and  waiting  between  the  river  and 
the  River  Road,  guarded  by  Jim  Loyd's  men; 
his  will  which  lay  now  upon  a  broad  oak  table  in 
the  library  of  his  big,  neglected  Milton  home; 
his  son  who  was  somewhere  in  Europe. 

A  great  lawyer  had  come  this  morning  from 
New  York,  to  attend  the  funeral  of  John  Sar- 
gent and  to  bring  the  will.  With  the  will,  he  had 
brought  a  memorandum  of  instructions  in  which 
John  Sargent  had  named  the  various  persons 
who  should  be  present  at  the  reading  of  the  will. 

These  persons  named  were  now  seated  in  the 
old  library,  waiting  for  the  lawyer  to  begin. 
They  were : 

Dean  Driscoll,  Nathan  Oppenheim,  George 
Lowther,  secretary  and  sales  manager  of  the  Mil- 
ton Machinery  Company,  James  Loyd,  John 
Strekno,  William  Flinn,  Norah  Gaylor.  With 
them  sat  the  Governor  of  the  State,  Gordon 
Fuller. 

Yesterday,  Christmas,  the  Governor  had 
stepped  off  the  eleven  o'clock  train  from  Albany 
and  walked  quietly  up  through  Milton.  What 
he  saw  was  a  town  so  quiet  that  it  seemed  to  have 
been  hushed  by  some  strong  will  brooding  over 
it.  Not  a  single  uniformed  policeman  was  to  be 
seen.  Two  or  three  sturdy  men  walked  quietly 
back  and  forth  on  each  block  of  State  Street. 


384         THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

With  the  exception  of  these,  there  were  hardly 
any  men  to  be  seen.  The  women  who  were 
abroad  went  swiftly  about  their  errands. 

Just  ahead  of  the  Governor,  two  men  stopped 
on  the  sidewalk  to  argue  about  something.  The 
Governor  stood  beside  them,  to  hear  what  it  was 
about.  One  of  the  patrolling  men  stepped  up  to 
the  three  and,  touching  the  Governor  lightly  on 
the  arm,  curtly  ordered  the  three  to  move  on. 
They  did  so. 

"What  did  that  mean?"  the  Governor  asked 
one  of  the  two  men,  when  all  three  had  gone  a 
little  way. 

"When  did  you  get  into  town?"  the  man  re- 
turned. Then,  seeing  that  the  Governor  did  not 
really  know  what  it  was  all  about,  the  man  ex- 
plained : 

"Loyd's  orders." 

The  Governor  walked  on  by  himself. 

Loyd's  orders! — he  said  to  himself — they 
seemed  to  think  that  that  explained  everything! 
I  think  I  ought  to  know  this  man  Loyd.  I 
might  learn  something  from  him.  Any  man  that 
can  stand  a  town  up  on  end  like  this,  is  worth 
knowing.  He's  a  governor!  Not  one  of  the 
paper  and  tape  kind,  like  me. 

Without  asking  any  further  questions,  he  made 
his  way  up  through  the  town  to  Dean  Driscoll's 
house. 

Rapidly  and  clearly  the  Dean  showed  him  the 
situation.  He  was  confronted  with  an  open  re- 


THE  LONG  ROAD  385 

volt  against  the  authority  of  the  State,  vested  in 
his  own  person. 

Then  the  Dean  laid  before  him  Sargent's  re- 
quest, that  all  things  remain  as  they  were  until 
his  will  had  been  read. 

"I  will  see  Loyd  first,"  said  the  Governor. 
"Will  he  come  here?" 

Loyd  came. 

The  Governor  threatened  him  with  the  armed 
forces  of  the  whole  State.  Loyd  replied  that  he 
had  expected  all  that  from  the  beginning.  The 
Governor  offered  him  a  pardon  for  his  own  crime, 
if  he  would  go  back  to  jail  and  drop  the  busi- 
ness which  he  had  undertaken.  Loyd  answered 
that  he  had  tried  his  own  case  and  had  found 
himself  not  guilty.  Therefore  there  was  no  need 
of  pardon. 

The  Governor  thought  a  while. 

"We  will  listen  to  the  dead  man,"  he  said 
finally. 

Now  they  were  listening  to  the  dead  man. 
Before  coming  to  the  will,  the  great  lawyer 
picked  up  from  the  table  a  smaller  paper.  From 
it  he  read  a  sworn  and  witnessed  statement  by 
the  late  John  Sargent,  setting  forth  that  he,  John 
Sargent,  had  given  the  order,  by  telephone  from 
the  village  of  Benson,  for  the  explosion  which 
wrecked  the  stock  house  of  the  Milton  Machinery 
plant  on  the  morning  of  September  fifth. 

This  was  the  crime  of  which  Jim  Loyd  had 
been  convicted. 


386        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

The  eyes  of  the  room  turned  to  Loyd.  But 
Loyd  was  not  thinking  of  the  change  which  this 
statement  made  in  his  position.  He  was  think- 
ing of  John  Sargent.  The  other  night,  when  he 
was  dying,  John  Sargent  knew  that  he  had  done 
this  act  of  justice.  But,  he  had  chosen  to  go  off 
surlily,  into  the  dark,  leaving  Loyd  to  think  the 
worst  of  him.  Why  had  he  riot  spoken  then? 
Well,  Sargent  had  always  been  that  way. 

He  had  always  kept  his  worst  side  out. 

There  was  a  general  stir  in  the  room.  The 
Governor  rose  and  came  over  to  take  Loyd's 
hand. 

"I  am  very  glad  it  has  come  out  this  way, 
Loyd,"  said  the  Governor.  "I  was  convinced 
that  you  were  innocent,  from  the  moment  he  told 
me  of  the  thing  that  day  in  my  office.  I  would 
have  given  you  a  pardon  the  moment  you  were 
sentenced.  It  was  a  bad  business." 

"Mr.  Sargent  was  not  to  blame,"  said  Loyd, 
looking  the  Governor  levelly  in  the  eyes. 

The  Governor  did  not  understand. 

"Mr.  Sargent,"  Loyd  went  on,  "found  a  sys- 
tem and  used  it.  That  was  all.  He  did  not 
make  the  system.  He  was  a  part  of  it,  himself. 
The  system,  the  conditions  of  things,  the  State, 
the  people  of  the  State,  the  officials  of  the  State : 
They  are  all  to  blame.  The  trouble  is  not  that 
men  do  those  things,  the  trouble  is  that  they  can 
do  those  things." 

It  was  not  altogether  a  pleasant  return  of  the 


THE  LONG  ROAD  387 

Governor's  well-meant  heartiness,  but  the  Gov- 
ernor met  it  frankly. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  "we  are  all  to  blame.  We  all 
admit  carelessness  and  indifference  and  social  in- 
justice. But,"  he  added,  "we  are  not  all  able  to 
lead  armies,  to  right  the  wrongs." 

The  lawyer  was  now  going  on  with  the  will. 

After  the  preamble,  the  will  disposed  of  small 
individual  bequests  to  old  servants  and  depend- 
ents. There  was  a  thoroughgoing  completeness 
about  the  way  in  which  John  Sargent  arranged 
these ;  giving  what  was  enough  to  each,  and  noth- 
ing more  than  enough,  for  prudent,  frugal  living, 
that  showed  that  John  Sargent  had  considered 
each  individual  separately  and  with  studied  care. 

Then  there  were  certain  charities,  favorites  of 
his  mother,  to  which  John  Sargent  had  regularly 
contributed  for  years.  To  these  various  causes 
he  had  left  sums  governed  in  amount,  not  by  their 
need  or  their  comparative  usefulness  or  effective- 
ness for  good.  He  had  dealt  with  them  solely 
on  the  basis  of  the  estimation  which  his  mother 
had  held  of  them  many  years  ago.  To  himself, 
or  as  channels  of  help  to  the  world's  needy  and 
suffering,  those  charities  had  never  meant  any- 
thing. He  had  always  found  the  scrap  heap  so 
near  and  such  a  good  investment,  that  he  believed 
it  a  waste  of  the  world's  good  time  and  energy  to 
try  to  save  the  weak  things  or  the  useless  things. 

Concerning  Milton  Sargent,  the  son  of  John 
Sargent,  the  will  explained  that  a  certain  sum 


388        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

had  already  been  set  aside,  invested  in  bonds  that 
could  not  fail  to  give  their  stated  returns,  for  his 
support  during  life.  This  arrangement  had  al- 
ready been  perfected.  Properly  it  had  nothing 
to  do  with  this  present  document. 

But  John  Sargent  had  desired  to  leave  a  state- 
ment of  this  case.  He  had  not  cut  his  son  off 
from  participation  in  the  body  of  his  estate 
through  any  bitterness  or  malice.  There  was  no 
word  of  blame  for  the  son.  John  Sargent  stated 
simply  that  he  did  not  judge  his  son  competent 
to  handle  the  large  responsibility  of  money  and 
power.  It  would  not  conduce  to  his  son's  wel- 
fare or  happiness.  There  was  no  complaint. 
John  Sargent  stated  a  bald  fact.  And  in  that 
simple  statement  he  disposed  of  the  bitter  disap- 
pointment of  his  life. 

Then  came  the  main  clause  of  the  will. 

"My  estate," — it  is  better  to  quote — "consist- 
ing of  twenty-two  thousand  shares  of  the  Milton 
Machinery  Company's  stock,  I  leave  in  trust  to 
all  and  several  employees  of  the  Milton  Machin- 
ery Company  who  were  continuously  in  the  em- 
ploy of  said  company  during  the  five  years  next 
previous  to  the  third  day  of  May  of  this  calendar 
year.  I  direct  and  hereby  name  Nathan  Oppen- 
heim  of  New  York,  Reverend  James  Driscoll, 
George  Lowther,  John  Strekno,  William  Flinn, 
James  Loyd,  Norah  Gaylor,  all  of  Milton,  to  be 
and  act  as  trustees  for  the  herein  described  bene- 
ficiaries. The  said  trustees  shall  form  a  corpora- 


THE  LONG  ROAD  389 

tion  to  hold  and  manage  the  stock  herein  be- 
queathed to  the  described  beneficiaries.  They 
will  be  in  actual  possession  of  nine-tenths  of  all 
the  shares  of  the  Milton  Machinery  Company. 
It  will  therefore  be  incumbent  upon  the  said  trus- 
tees, as  representing  the  majority  stockholders, 
to  choose  and  appoint  the  officers  of  the  Milton 
Machinery  Company  and  to  govern  the  affairs 
of  that  company. 

"I  likewise  devise  that  each  and  every  em- 
ployee, other  than  those  specified  above,  shall, 
when  he  or  she  shall  have  completed  five  years 
continuous  employment  with  said  company,  be- 
come automatically  a  participant  in  the  benefits 
of  this  instrument  and  a  co-owner  of  the  shares 
before  named.  (The  months  during  the  Sum- 
mer and  Fall  of  the  present  year,  when  all  work 
was  suspended  in  Milton  shall  be  reckoned  as  em- 
ployment. ) 

"The  shares  shall  be  apportioned  and  owned 
by  the  employees  and  the  profits  therefrom 
divided  in  a  scale  mathematically  based  upon  the 
comparative  wages  earned  by  the  employees. 

"I  hereby  name  and  request  Nathan  Oppen- 
heim  and  the  Reverend  James  Driscoll  herein- 
before mentioned  to  act  as  executors  of  this,  my 
last  will  and  testament." 

This  was  the  end  of  the  will  proper.  But 
John  Sargent  had  more  to  say.  Beneath  his  sig- 
nature and  that  of  the  witnesses,  he  had  ap- 
pended his  own  statement  in  his  own  way.  It 


390        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

was  evident  that  while  forming  the  main  portion 
of  the  will  he  had  been  hampered  by  the  stunting 
phraseology  of  the  lawyer. 

Now  he  was  free  to  tell  the  world  just  what  he 
thought.  Probably  he  did  not  remember  just 
how  little  the  world  cared  about  what  he  thought 
and  said,  or  why.  Perhaps  he  did  not  care.  It 
was  his  word.  It  was  John  Sargent,  as  he  had 
lived  and  thought,  and  as  he  expected  to  die. 

"I  am  not  a  philanthropist,"  he  had  written. 
"I  am  not  a  repentant  pirate  of  industry,  trying 
to  snivel  into  the  good  memory  of  men.  I  have 
no  idea  that  what  I  have  just  done  will  accom- 
plish any  real  good  either  for  the  world  or  for 
those  who  receive  benefits  from  my  will. 

"I  have  not  space  here  to  enumerate  all  the  rea- 
sons which  prompted  me  to  doing  what  I  have 
done.  No  man  is  ever  sure  just  why  he  does  any 
particular  thing. 

"Three  months  ago  I  would  have  said,  and  be- 
lieved, that  a  man  who  did  a  thing  such  as  I  have 
done,  would,  in  effect,  be  an  enemy  to  society.  I 
would  have  said :  The  man  had  a  fortune ;  a  for- 
tune is  a  sacred  thing.  A  fortune  is  a  thing  that 
by  its  very  nature  is  bound  to  make  another  for- 
tune. It  is  bound  to  go  on  adding  to  the  wealth 
of  the  world  by  adding  to  itself.  Men  who  have 
money  are  bound  to  go  on  making  more  money 
and  keeping  it  together,  for  only  by  these  men 
making  money  and  keeping  it  together  is  the 
wealth  and  prosperity  of  the  world  increased. 


THE  LONG  ROAD  391 

"Men  who  have  money  and  the  ability  to  make 
money — I  said — are  in  a  class  by  themselves. 
They  have  upon  them  the  burden  of  making  this 
world  rich  and  keeping  it  rich.  And  this  is  a  task 
that  is  every  day  getting  harder  and  harder. 
The  unfit,  the  unready,  the  unwilling  are  every 
day  increasing  out  of  all  proportion.  They  are 
not  content  to  eat  the  share  of  the  world's 
wealth  day  by  day,  as  it  is  provided  for  them. 
No.  They  want  to  come  into  the  storehouse  and 
eat  up  in  one  gorge  what  it  has  taken  years  to 
gather. 

"Men  of  wealth,  men  with  the  ability  to  make 
and  store  up,  must  stand  together.  Wealth 
must  stand  by  wealth.  We  must  keep  back  the 
crowd  from  the  storehouse.  Otherwise  they  will 
come  in  and  glut  themselves  in  one  meal — and 
then  the  world  will  starve  to  death.  We  are  the 
guardians,  the  keepers,  the  makers  and  the  keep- 
ers. We  have  a  duty  to  the  world  and  to  each 
other,  we  men  of  wealth.  We  must  go  on  pro- 
ducing, producing  so  that  the  world  may  eat. 
We  must  go  on  keeping,  keeping  so  that  we  will 
have  the  power  to  go  on  producing.  If  we  do 
not  produce,  the  world  starves.  If  we  do  not 
keep,  we  cannot  go  on  producing  more — the 
more  that  is  always  being  demanded. 

"We  must  stand  and  fight  against  the  glut- 
tony of  the  world.  If  allowed  to,  it  would  eat 
in  a  day  all  that  we  can  produce  in  a  year.  So- 
cial unrest,  the  ever-whetted  appetite  of  the 


392        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

many,  wanting  to  eat  more  than  there  is  for  them 
to  eat,  is  crowding  us  harder  and  harder.  We 
must  stand  back  to  back,  shoulder  to  shoulder, 
or  we  shall  be  pulled  down. 

"Think  of  it!"  The  lawyer  unconsciously  fell 
into  the  tones  of  the  dead  man  with  whom  he 
had  long  been  intimate.  The  effect  was  un- 
canny. The  lawyer  himself  felt  it,  and  changed 
his  voice  carefully  as  he  began  again. 

"Think  of  it!  For  all  the  years  of  my  man- 
hood, thirty  years  and  more,  I  believed  that!  I 
was  a  fool,  of  course.  But  I  believed  it.  I  be- 
lieved that  every  rich  man  belonged  to  a  class  of 
rich  men.  I  believed  that  they  were  loyal  to  each 
other  and  to  their  class.  I  was  proud  to  be  of 
the  class.  I  believed  that  we  all  stood  together, 
especially  in  this  country,  to  hold  back  the  on- 
coming rush  of  Socialism  and  Anarchy  and  the 
short-sighted  greed  of  the  non-producing  many. 

"Then  I  got  my  lesson. 

"I  was  in  trouble.  My  employees  had  fought 
me  to  a  standstill.  I  saw  ruin.  On  top  of  that 
came  the  Governor  of  the  State,  sworn  to  protect 
me  while  I  produced  wealth  for  the  State;  he 
came  and  pushed  me  out  of  my  own  mill.  I  was 
helpless.  I  needed  help.  I  went  to  those  who 
could  and,  of  course,  would  help  me — to  my  fel- 
low rich  men.  What  did  they  do? 

"They  tried  to  throw  me  out  to  the  pack! 

"I  am  putting  my  fortune  back  where,  some 
say,  it  originally  came  from.  They  say  it  came 


THE  LONG  ROAD  393 

from  the  hands  of  those  who  have  worked  for  me. 
They  lie.  My  fortune  came  out  of  my  father's 
brain  and  mine. 

"And,  why? 

"I  am  doing  this,  not  because  I  feel  I  ought  to 
do  it,  not  because  it  will  do  good,  but  because  it 
will  be  an  everlasting  scare  and  nightmare  to  all 
rich  men. 

"I  have  found  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
class  responsibility  or  loyalty  among  rich  men. 
But  by  this  I  will  teach  all  rich  men  that  it  would 
not  be  difficult  to  put  an  end  to  them  all. 
Wherever  two  of  them  talk  together,  they  will 
revile  John  Sargent  because  he  showed  Social- 
ism how,  and  how  easily,  it  might  be  done. 

"But  I  am  not  doing  this  for  Socialism.  It 
will  not  advance  the  cause  of  that  goose-killing 
fraud. 

"For  years  I  have  heard  that  the  profits  of  my 
mill  were  not  divided.  They  were  not  divided. 
They  were  kept  together.  And  they  were  put 
back  into  the  mill — to  make  it  produce  more  and 
more,  that  the  people  might  eat,  and  go  on  eat- 
ing. 

"The  profits  will  not  be  divided  now.  There 
will  be  no  profits.  Those  profits  were  sweated 
out  of  my  own  brain  and  energy. 

"Finally.  If  any  of  those  to  whom  I  am  giv- 
ing my  fortune  say  that  it  was  theirs  by  right, 
that  I  took  it  from  their  work  and  kept  it  from 
them  all  these  years;  then,  I  challenge  them. 


394         THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

"Let  them  show  twenty  years  from  now  how 
many  of  them  have  anything  of  what  I  have 
given  them! 

"Twenty  years  ago,  they  had  nothing. 
Twenty  years  from  now,  most  of  them  will  have 
nothing. 

"I  am  going  now  to  Milton,  to  make  my  last 
fight,  alone. 

"If  I  beat  all  my  enemies  completely,  abso- 
lutely ;  then  I  shall  come  back  here  and  burn  this. 
If  I  die  before  I  beat  them  all,  then  this  shall 
stand  as  it  is  written." 

As  the  lawyer  finished  reading,  the  party  rose. 
Bewilderment  was  the  only  feeling  that  was 
written  on  their  faces  with  any  clearness.  When 
a  man  who  does  not  understand  himself,  and  who, 
in  addition  to  that,  deliberately  puts  the  worst 
side  out,  tries  to  reveal  himself,  the  result  is 
bound  to  be  confusing. 

The  Governor  asked  the  great  lawyer: 

"Is  that  will  sound?" 

"As  sound  as  human,  and  legal,  foresight  can 
make  anything.  I  should  say  it  is  absolutely  un- 
assailable," was  the  answer. 

"What  can  be  done  here,  in  the  meantime,  be- 
fore it  can  go  into  effect,  I  mean?" 

"The  court  can  appoint  the  executors  to  hold 
the  property.  That's  the  simplest  way." 


CHAPTER  XVI 
THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

TT  was  New  Year's  Day  on  the  hills.  A  biting, 
*•  freezing  wind  came  sweeping  down  from 
Orrin  Mountain,  down  across  the  lesser  uplands, 
cleansing  all  things.  It  brushed  the  light  snow 
from  the  brows  of  the  hillocks,  leaving  them  bare 
and  bald,  and  carried  it  down  on  its  breath,  a 
biting,  bitter-sweet  breath,  to  the  valley. 

A  clear  day,  a  cold  day,  a  day  when  earth  was 
as  clean  as  heaven;  a  day  white  and  bright  lay 
like  a  new  page  for  the  New  Year  to  begin  upon. 

It  was  a  day  to  set  forth  illimitable  promise. 
All  things  might  be  done.  All  things  were  new. 
All  dead  things  were  buried,  covered;  a  clean, 
sweet,  new  sheet  was  spread  over  all. 

Now  let  all  men  begin  anew!  A  new  life,  a 
new  heart,  a  new  hope! 

The  diamond-dust  snow-crystals  in  the  air  bit 
into  the  nostrils  and  the  throat.  The  breath  of 
the  wind  was  death  to  everything  that  was  un- 
sound or  unwholesome.  But  to  healthy  things 
it  was  life.  It  was  spirit.  It  was  courage  and 
vigor.  To  the  body,  it  was  stamina  and  blood 
and  strength.  To  the  soul,  it  was  a  restless,  ir- 

395 


396        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

repressible  prompting  for  growth,  for  a  bigger, 
better  life ;  indeed,  for  a  New  Year. 

Nonie  Gaylor  was  alone  on  the  hill  in  the  Cath- 
olic cemetery.  She  was  half  kneeling  beside  a 
little  evergreen,  carefully  trimming  off  the  rusted 
branches,  so  that  it  might  be  all  fresh  and  green 
and  glad  to  the  New  Year. 

She  was  talking  to  Harry  Loyd.  She  was 
sure  that — where  Harry  was — he  knew  all  about 
things.  But  then,  how  could  he  know  all  about 
things,  just  as  they  were,  unless  he  heard  them 
from  her?  There  were  so  many  things,  and  lit- 
tle meanings  of  things,  that  he  could  not  possibly 
get  right  except  from  her. 

His  grave  lay  just  at  the  foot  of  the  little  ever- 
green bush.  But  she  was  not  thinking  so  much 
of  the  grave.  She  was  able  to  shut  her  eyes  and 
just  feel  that  Harry  was  near  and  listening. 
She  told  all  her  little  things  to  the  evergreen  as 
she  worked  lovingly  among  its  branches. 

Harry  had  to  know  all  the  things  that  had 
been  happening  in  Milton.  How  John  Sargent 
had  arranged  his  Christmas  presents.  How 
Harry's  brother,  big,  fierce,  dour  Jim  Loyd,  had 
taken  Milton  and  all  in  it  by  the  throat.  How 
he  had  tried,  tried  with  his  hands,  to  kill  John 
Sargent ;  and  how  God  would  not  let  him.  And 
then  how  Jim  Loyd  and  herself  had  knelt  beside 
John  Sargent  and  sent  him  away  to  God  with 
a  message  for  forgiveness.  How  they  had  all 
stood  on  the  brink  of  terror,  and  chance  had  come 


THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN        397 

staggering  along  on  the  arm  of  destiny  and  had 
changed  everything.  How  the  New  Year,  the 
new  time,  the  new  hope,  had  come  for  all  of  them. 

Harry  would  want  to  know,  from  her,  about  it 
all.  Now  she  could  tell  him  how  much  his  going 
had  had  to  do  with  everything.  She  had  not  un- 
derstood that  before.  And  she  had  been  very 
near  to  blaming  God.  Now  she  knew  better. 
John  Sargent  had  let  her  see  how  it  had  all 
worked  out  from  that  night  when  she  had  given 
Harry  a  good-night  kiss  and  sent  him  whistling 
down  the  road  with  a  prayer  breathed  after  him. 
Now  she  could  tell  him  how  it  had  not  been  all  in 
vain. 

How  blythe  and  brave  her  Harry  had  been 
that  night,  when  they  had  found  that  they  must 
wait  a  long  time  for  each  other.  And  she  had 
been  heart-sick  and  a  little  rebellious,  because 
they  had  to  help  others  and  wait  for  their  own 
happiness.  How  gaily  he  had  said,  "You're 
worth  waiting  for,  Nonie:  And  old  John  W. 
Wait  has  nothing  on  me." 

She  fondled  the  boy's  airy  words  over  on  her 
lips,  as  she  had  done  many  times;  and  as  she 
would  do  so  many,  many  times  in  the  long  roll 
of  the  years  to  come.  And  then  when  she  had 
told  him  everything,  even  down  to  the  last  word 
that  John  Sargent  had  growled  at  the  world  in 
his  will,  she  prepared  to  go.  Giving  the  little 
evergreen  a  final  pat  she  said,  half  aloud : 

"We'd  have  had  to  wait,  anyway.     Now  we'll 


398         THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

have  to  wait  a  little  longer.  You  don't  mind  the 
waiting,  do  you?  And  I — it  won't  seem  so  long. 
Tell  me,  Dear  Heart,  that  it  won't  seem  so  very 
long." 

But  the  evergreen  only  shivered  a  little  in  the 
North  wind. 

From  the  River  Road  a  private  road  turned 
off  and  ran  in  between  the  two  cemeteries.  On 
the  other  side  of  it,  stretching  away  up  the  far 
hillside,  lay  the  general  cemetery  of  Milton. 

As  Nonie  Gaylor  stood  up,  a  man  was  coming 
up  the  private  road.  He  was  a  big  man  with  a 
dark  head  and  enormous,  wide-spanning  shoul- 
ders, who  walked  slowly  with  his  eyes  down  upon 
the  road  beneath  him. 

It  was  Jim  Loyd.  She  wondered.  It  was 
not  like  him  to  be  coming  up  here  on  a  day  like 
this,  or  on  any  day.  She  supposed,  of  course, 
that  he  was  coming  here,  for  the  road  led  no- 
where else. 

But  when  he  had  come  almost  opposite  her  in 
the  road,  he  turned,  and,  climbing  the  stile  on  the 
other  side  of  the  road,  went  into  the  other  ceme- 
tery. 

In  a  moment  she  saw  where  he  was  going. 
Across  the  road,  almost  opposite  to  where  her 
Harry  lay,  there  stood  an  enormous,  rough-cut, 
stark  boulder  of  dark  granite.  Old  Milton  Sar- 
gent had  seen  it  cut  out  of  the  heart  of  the  hills. 
His  bones  had  now  lain  under  it  for  many  years. 


THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN        399 

Beside  it  was  a  new  grave,  showing  up  raw  and 
brown  through  the  drifting  snow. 

At  the  foot  of  the  new  grave  Jim  Loyd 
stopped  and  stood  there,  baring  his  black  head 
to  the  North  wind. 

Nome  Gaylor  watched  him.  He  had  not  seen 
her,  but  she  did  not  feel  that  she  was  spying 
upon  him.  She  watched  him  frankly,  and  as  she 
watched  she  saw  the  lines  of  his  face  and  his 
great,  rough  figure  soften,  as  though  a  galling 
burden  of  years  had  suddenly  been  lifted  from 
him.  And  she  understood.  Through  a  rush  of 
choking  tears,  she  half  smiled — a  pale,  sorrow- 
bitten  little  smile,  nevertheless,  a  smile,  of  under- 
standing and  mothering  sympathy.  Big  Jim 
Loyd  was  as  foolish  as  she — coming  to  say  things 
to  the  voiceless  dead! 

How  far  away  now  seems  that  time  when  she 
had  feared  this  big  man  with  his  burning  eyes  and 
his  grim,  clamped  jaw! 

Now  she  began  to  understand  how  it  was  that 
he  could  come  and  talk  to  John  Sargent.  There 
had  always  been  a  sort  of  rough  likeness  between 
the  two  men.  She  saw  it  now:  The  same  dark 
ruthlessness  in  the  looks  of  both :  The  same  un- 
blinking way  of  fixing  their  eyes  upon  the  thing 
they  wanted,  and  going  forward  to  take  that 
thing,  no  matter  what  the  cost:  The  same  hard, 
contemptuous  scorn  of  the  ways  and  opinions  of 
lesser  men.  Brothers  in  the  mold  they  had  been. 


400         THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

She  wondered  if  the  leaders  of  men  had  always 
to  have  those  same  tyrannical,  hard-driving  ways. 
Were  those  the  only  ways  in  which  men  could  be 
ruled  and  handled? 

And  what  a  fight  these  two  men  would  have 
shown  to  the  world  if  they  had  been  put  into  it 
with  equal  weapons.  They  would  have  split  the 
world  between  them.  But,  no,  she  remembered. 
They  would  not  do  that.  They  would  not  have 
divided  anything,  those  two.  They  would  have 
fought  until  one  had  killed  the  other  and  had 
taken  all. 

But,  if  they  had  been  friends,  standing  to- 
gether in  some  great  cause ! 

Or,  if  they  had  been  father  and  son! 

Then  she  remembered  that  John  Sargent  had 
a  son.     Would  idleness  and  money  and  the  lure 
of  life  have  done  the  same  things  to  Jim  Loyd— 
had  he  been  born  to  them — that  they  had  done  to 
the  actual  son  of  John  Sargent? 

Or  would  Jim  Loyd,  supposing  that  he  had 
been  educated  and  trained  to  take  John  Sar- 
gent's place  in  the  world,  have  developed  the 
same  grasping,  self -centered  hunger  for  wealth 
and  power  that  had  made  John  Sargent  what  he 
was?  She  did  not  know. 

How  strange  it  was  that  the  world  should  have 
so  many  jagged  edges  that  would  not  fit  together 
in  any  place.  Just  as  you  had  one  little  part 
nicely  arranged,  you  suddenly  found  that  the 
whole  thing  was  wrong  everywhere  else. 


THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN        401 

Loyd  lifted  his  head  and,  turning,  saw  her. 
He  came  out  to  the  road  and  crossed  over  to 
where  she  was. 

"Happy  New  Year,  Nonie!"  he  said  in  a 
strange,  quiet  voice. 

"I  hope  so,  Jim;  for  us  all,"  she  returned 
thoughtfully.  "I've  just  been  telling  Harry  all 
about  everything."  She  had  not  the  slightest 
fear  that  he  would  wonder  at  her  or  fail  to  un- 
derstand. 

Loyd  stood  uncovered  beside  the  tree  that  she 
had  trimmed  and  gazed  at  the  whitened  grave  be- 
neath it. 

"It  had  to  be  so,  I  guess,"  he  said,  turning  to 
her.  "I  suppose  there  was  no  other  way.  It 
had  to  be  just  so." 

The  Jim  Loyd  who  spoke  was  a  man  differ- 
ent, irrevocably  different  from  the  man  that  she 
had  known.  His  eyes  were  still  steady.  His 
head  was  held  as  high  as  ever.  He  looked,  per- 
haps, stronger  than  ever.  But  it  was  a  look  of 
tried  and  chastened  strength,  a  strength  that 
knew  that,  after  all,  there  was  something  that 
could  curb  it,  something  that  could  conquer  it  in 
the  end.  It  was  a  strength — the  greatest  of  all 
strength — that  bowed  itself  to  the  hand  of  God. 

Unconsciously  he  had  taken  the  thought 
against  which  she  had  been  rebelling  a  little — she 
could  not  see  why  God  could  not  have  arranged 
a  world  in  which  there  were  fewer  jagged  edges 
— and  he  had  accepted  it  without  question.  The 


402 

Jim  Loyd  of  old  had  never  accepted  anything 
without  question. 

"It's  all  a  challenge  to  us,  Nonie,"  he  said, 
after  they  had  taken  their  silent  leave  of  the 
dead.  "He  challenged  us,  and  all  the  world  will 
challenge  us,  to  make  it  a  better  New  Year,  to  do 
better  than  he  did." 

"Can  we  do  it,  Jim?"  she  asked,  as  they  came 
out  into  the  road  and  started  for  home.  "I 
know  that  I  can  do  a  great  deal  for  the  women. 
I  am  sure  that  I  can  save  a  lot  of  the  hardship. 
But  can  we  do  it?  It  will  take  money.  And 
was  he  right,  when  he  said  that  there  would  be 
no  profits?  Can  that  be  so?" 

"No."  Loyd  spoke  simply,  with  the  assur- 
ance of  one  who  has  studied  and  who  knows  his 
ground.  "He  was  wrong  in  that.  At  first  the 
profits  will  not  be  as  big  as  he  has  sometimes 
made.  We  have  to  look  for  that.  We'll  have 
to  spend  a  lot  of  money,  changing  things.  And 
we'll  have  all  the  big  interests  against  us  from 
the  start.  They'll  spend  money  like  water  to 
down  us.  Because  Mr.  Sargent  did  just  what 
he  thought  he  would  do.  He  threw  an  everlast- 
ing scare  into  all  the  big  men  who  are  making 
money  out  of  labor.  They  will  never  forgive 
him.  And  they'll  never  let  up  on  us. 

"All  the  big  iron  and  steel  men  are  swearing 
agreements  among  themselves  this  minute  not 
to  sell  us  materials.  But  it's  just  as  he  said. 
Rich  men  can't  hold  together  long.  Their 


THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN        403 

money,  and  the  fear  that  they'll  lose  money  won't 
let  them.  Some  one  of  them  will  always  sneak 
out  of  the  agreement  and  sell  to  us.  And  he 
won't  do  it  for  the  sake  of  the  money  either, 
that's  the  funny  part  of  it.  He'll  do  it  because 
he's  afraid  some  sworn  brother  of  his  may  beat 
him  to  it." 

"And  are  we  all  Socialists  now,  Jim?"  the  girl 
asked.  " Somebody  said  we  were." 

"Socialists?"  Loyd  looked  down  at  her,  as 
though  the  word  were  new  to  him.  "Nobody's 
a  Socialist  when  he's  got  what  he  wants." 

The  girl  recognized  the  old  Loyd  in  the  words. 

"No.  That  ain't  right,  either."  He  caught 
himself  up  sharply,  and  Nonie  Gaylor  remem- 
bered that  she  had  never  before  heard  this  man 
correct  himself.  "That  ain't  fair:  Socialism 
ain't  all  just  an  appetite  and  nothing  else. 

"But — '  He  started  to  make  it  clear,  but 
found  that  he  did  not  have  the  words. 

"I  don't  know,"  he  began  again.  "But  I 
think  it's  this  way: 

"Everybody  in  the  world  is  a  Socialist,  if  you'd 
let  him  have  his  own  brand  of  it." 

They  had  come  now  to  the  River  Road,  and 
both  instinctively  turned  back  to  look  up  the  hill. 

It  was  Loyd  who  spoke : 

"It  all  had  to  be — had  to  be,  I  suppose.  But 
I  don't  know.  I'd — I'd  like  to  able  to  wish 
away  some  of  it." 

Aiid  she  knew  some  of  the  things  which  had 


404        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

been  done  had  left  a  mark  on  Jim  Loyd  which 

he  would  carry  forever. 

She  turned  quietly  toward  home,  saying: 
"Our  business  now  is  to  live  and  work:     The 

rest  is  already  in  God's  hands.     He  will  look  to 

it." 

They  went  down  the  River  Road,  to  begin  the 

New  Year,  the  new  time  of  life,  and  work,  and 

service  for  men  and  women. 

"You're  a  very  busy  man,  I'll  not  stop  to-day, 
I'm  on  my  way  to  the  train  now,"  said  Father 
Lynch,  as  he  poked  his  head  unannounced  into 
the  Dean's  study  where  the  latter  sat  writing  a 
letter.  The  Dean  rose  and  hurried  to  place  the 
favored  chair  for  his  friend. 

Because  Father  Lynch  had  come  for  what  he 
knew  would  be  an  uncommonly  interesting  ses- 
sion of  the  monthly  court  which  he  held  over  the 
Dean  and  the  Dean's  doings — from  which  horses 
could  not  have  dragged  him  away,  it  took  an 
unusual  amount  of  insistence,  and  some  physical 
force,  to  get  him  relieved  of  his  coat  and  seated. 
Even  then,  he  continued  to  protest  that — from 
all  he  heard — the  Dean  was  too  busy,  too  deeply 
engrossed  in  large  affairs,  to  be  interrupted. 

Finally,  however,  he  settled  down  and  opened 
his  court.  Without  preface  he  made  his  charge. 

"So  you  have  gone  over  to  the  tents  of  Israel!" 
he  said,  eyeing  the  Dean  sternly. 

"A  man  like  you,"  he  continued,  giving  the 


THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN        405 

Dean  no  time  to  answer,  "that  could  never  keep 
two  dollars  of  your  own  together,  going  into 
dealings  at  your  time  o'  life  with  a — a  Jew!" 

"Oh,"  said  the  Dean,  catching  the  drift  of  the 
argument,  "you  mean  the  business  of  Mr.  Sar- 
gent's will.  Well,  you  see,  Father  Patrick, 
there  isn't  much  for  the  executors  to  do.  Mr. 
Sargent  provided  for  everything  so  thoroughly 
that  our  work  is  purely  mechanical. 

"Seriously,  though,"  the  Dean  went  on  to  ex- 
plain, "the  selection  of  Mr.  Oppenheim  showed 
remarkable  foresight  and  insight  on  the  part  of 
Mr.  Sargent.  Mr.  Oppenheim  is  a  man  of  great 
wealth,  with  his  fortune  so  placed  that  he  is,  so 
far  as  is  possible,  independent  of  all  the  combina- 
tions of  great  interests.  There  is  no  wiser  or 
shrewder  man  in  all  America.  And  he  is  a  He- 
brew. This  last  means  that  he  is  of  a  race  of 
people  in  whom  respect  for  the  wishes  of  the  dead 
is  one  of  their  most  indelible  traits.  No  people 
in  the  world,  perhaps,  is  so  faithful  to  obligations 
placed  upon  it  by  death  than  is  the  Hebrew  race. 

"As  you  know,  Father,  John  Sargent's  for- 
tune, the  Milton  Machinery  Company,  was  not 
merely  a  manufacturing  plant.  It  was  a  great 
financial  institution,  with  its  own  banks  and  its 
trolley  franchises  and  its  real  estate  here.  The 
financing  of  such  an  institution,  with  the  enor- 
mous credits  that  it  must  carry,  requires  the 
highest  order  of  money  genius.  Without  the 
strength  and  counsel  of  such  a  man  as  Oppen- 


406        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

heim  we  should  be  helpless.  By  securing  a  man 
such  as  Oppenheim — and  securing  him  by  an 
inviolable  and  sacred  obligation — Mr.  Sargent 
has  left  us  in  a  position  where  we  need  fear  noth- 
ing. To  me,  it  is  the  very  strongest  proof  that 
John  Sargent,  in  spite  of  all,  really  meant  to  do 
a  great  and  lasting  thing  with  his  money." 

"Dean,"  said  Father  Lynch  accusingly,  "I  am 
not  being  told  the  facts!  It  is  inconsistent;  all 
of  it!"  He  had  the  air  of  a  judge  the  dignity 
of  whose  court  is  being  trifled  with. 

"John  Sargent  wrote  that  will  three  months 
ago,"  he  reviewed  severely.  "He  came  back  here 
and  took  back  his  mill  from  the  Governor  on  the 
strength  of  a  promise  that  he  made  to  the  Gover- 
nor. He  intended  to  break  that  promise.  He 
began  to  run  his  mill  like  a  fiend.  You'd  think 
his  main  object  was  to  crush  and  maim  as  many 
men  as  he  could.  All  this  I  have  on  your  word. 

"He  used  the  machinery  of  the  county  to  drive 
an  innocent  man  to  State's  prison.  He  had  you 
held  up  and  pilloried  in  open  court  before  the 
country.  On  Christmas  Eve,  itself,  he  turned 
out  his  old  hands  that  had  made  his  fortune,  men 
and  women,  to  starve  through  the  winter.  With 
his  own  hand  he  killed  the  little  man. 

"And  all  that  time  there  was  lying  in  his  desk 
this  will.  A  will  that  puts  your  Jim  Loyd  in 
a  place  of  honor — his  particular  enemy!  He 
gives  his  fortune  to  the  people  he  was  trying  to 


THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN        407 

kill  and  starve.  He  leaves  you,  another  enemy, 
in  the  place  of  nearest  friend. 

"Do  you  expect  any  sane  man  to  believe  all 
this!  It's  out  of  all  reason,  I  tell  you,  Dean. 
No  man,  no  madman,  could  be  so  inconsistent! 
You  have  not  told  me  all,"  he  charged  flatly. 

The  Dean  was  silent  for  a  moment.  What 
was  there  to  say?  Father  Lynch  was  in  the 
right.  Nothing  could  explain  the  contradiction 
between  the  things  that  John  Sargent  had  done 
in  those  last  months,  and  the  will  which  had  all 
that  time  lain  in  his  desk.  He  himself  had 
known  the  man.  He  had  stood  beside  him  and 
talked  with  him  when  he  was  dying,  but  he  was 
as  far  from  understanding  as  Father  Lynch 
could  be. 

Finally  he  said  gravely : 

"You  are  right,  Father  Patrick,  there  is  one 
thing  that  you  were  not  shown :  One  thing  that 
could  not  be  brought  into  court.  Without  that, 
all  the  rest  is  wrong  and  contradictory  and  un- 
believable. It  is,  the  heart  of  the  man. 

"He  took  that  with  him — to  show  it  to 
Almighty  God.  He  trusted  no  man  to  see  it." 

This  was  ground  on  which  Father  Lynch  had 
no  jurisdiction  over  the  Dean.  They  had  come 
to  the  confines  of  the  Kingdom  of  God,  wherein, 
Father  Lynch  had  always  said,  the  Dean's 
proper  parish  lay. 

The  two  friends  sat  a  while  in  silence.     Years 


408        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

of  unbroken,  unstrained  friendship  lay  back  of 
them  and  between  them.  Their  understandings 
went  beyond  the  range  of  clumsy  words. 

"I  do  not  understand,"  said  the  Dean,  break- 
ing the  pause.  "The  heart  of  a  man  is  a  won- 
derful and  many  folded  thing.  There  are  places 
in  it  that  the  man  himself  has  never  explored, 
that  he  knows  nothing  about.  The  things  that 
a  man  is  saying  or  doing  or  thinking,  even,  have 
little  to  do  with  what  is  or  may  be  in  his  heart. 

"I  only  know  this :  John  Sargent  saw  every- 
where 'Every  man's  hand  against  him/  His 
men  fought  him.  The  Governor  was  against 
him.  His  own  friends  tried  to  ruin  him.  He 
struck  out,  viciously,  madly,  at  every  one  that 
fought  him.  He  was  set  upon  bringing  his  ene- 
mies to  their  knees.  He  wanted  to  kill  or  crush 
them  all.  He  fought  as  a  man  fights  who  has 
no  hope  in  this  life  or  in  another — if  you  and  I 
can  understand  what  such  a  man  feels.  He 
fought  on,  without  mercy  and  without  reason. 

"It  may  be  that  his  will  and  the  statement  that 
went  with  it  told  the  whole  story.  It  may  be  that, 
of  all  his  enemies — as  he  conceived  them — he 
hated  most  the  rich  friends  who  betrayed  him. 
It  may  be,  as  he  said,  that  he  gave  his  fortune  to 
his  workmen  merely  to  put  into  their  hands  a 
weapon  against  all  rich  men.  It  may  be  that  he 
simply  wished  to  make  his  men  carry  on  his  own 
undying  grudge  against  the  men  of  his  own  class. 


THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN        409 

He  seemed  to  think  that  this  was  his  reason. 
Probably  it  was,  as  far  as  he  knew  his  own  heart. 
But  this  was  not  all.  No,  I  am  certain  that 
there  was  more. 

"He  was  fighting  for  his  life,  we  have  to  re- 
member that.  You  and  I  know  nothing  about 
what  that  means  to  a  man  like  him.  There  is 
nothing  on  this  earth  that  could  mean  to  us  what 
money  and  power  and  success  meant  to  him. 
We  have  no  way  to  measure  the  things  that  he 
did  and  felt. 

"If  he  had  been  able  to  beat  all  his  enemies  in 
his  own  way,  he  would  not  have  done  what  he 
did. 

"If  he  had  been  granted  a  son  after  his  own 
kind,  he  would  not  have  done  what  he  did. 

"If  he  stopped  to  think  of  reasons,  these  are 
some  of  the  reasons. 

"But,  beneath  all  these  things,  I  believe  John 
Sargent  was  in  his  heart  a  workingman.  He 
thought  he  belonged  to  the  class  of  rich  men,  the 
natural  masters  of  men.  He  did  not.  He  loved 
work  done  by  the  hands  of  men.  He  understood 
men  who  worked  with  their  hands.  In  the  blood, 
he  was  brother  to  them.  He  knew  what  they 
thought  and  felt.  Near  the  end — even  while  his 
mind  and  his  body  were  fighting  them,  his  heart 
went  back  to  them.  He  knew  their  thoughts  and 
their  longing  for  a  chance  at  better  things.  In 
the  end  his  heart  wanted  to  give  them  that 


410        THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

chance,  even  though  his  mind  told  him  that  it 
would  do  them  no  good,  and  even  though  his  will 
fought  against  it. 

"Circumstances,  accidents,  what  you  may 
call  it,  left  the  victory  to  his  heart.  He  gave 
the  men  their  chance. 

"You  see,  Father  Patrick,  I  am  a  very  wise 
man,"  the  Dean  concluded. 

"Are  you?"  Father  Lynch  asked,  with  such 
a  face  of  wooden  gravity  that  the  Dean  burst 
out  laughing. 

"I  am,"  he  said,  recovering  himself.  "I  have 
given  you  good  and  wise  reason  on  a  thing  that 
neither  I  nor  any  other  man  knows  anything 
about — the  heart  of  a  man.  No  wise  man  could 
do  more. 

"But,  when  I  have  expounded  to  the  full, 
there  is  still  this  to  be  said:  I  have  seen  little 
children  holding  up  their  hands  to  God  for  John 
Sargent! 

"When  we  have  said  all  our  wise  saws  over  the 
matter,  we  may  well  come  back  to  that.  I  be- 
lieve those  little  ones  had  their  way.  For  their 
sakes,  God  did  put  one  great  and  good  thing  into 
the  heart  of  John  Sargent.  This  I  believe." 

"Amen!"  Father  Lynch  agreed  firmly. 

After  a  little  he  questioned  shrewdly: 

"Will  it  work,  Dean?  I  see  the  papers  all 
saying  that  it  is  impossible,  that  you  cannot  run 
a  year,  that  you  will  run  into  debt,  that  you  can- 
not find  markets,  that  you  cannot  get  the  work 


THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN        411 

out  of  the  men  as  Sargent  did.     Will  it  work?" 

"It  will,"  the  Dean  answered  stoutly.  "John 
Sargent  was  a  strong  and  successful  man.  But 
there  was  never  a  time  when  he  could  not  have 
hired  a  president  to  do  all  for  his  company  that 
he  did. 

"Give  Loyd  one  year,  and,  with  the  help  that 
he  has  from  Strekno  and  Flinn  and  Nonie  Gay- 
lor,  he  will  do  more  with  that  mill  than  John 
Sargent  could  ever  do. 

"The  papers  are  wrong.  This  is  no  amateur 
experiment.  The  mill  will  be  run  with  as  strong 
a  hand  as  ever  was  held  over  it.  But  it  will  be 
the  hand  of  the  men  themselves.  Trust  them. 
They  will  show  you  wonders." 

"This  Loyd  is  your  Socialist?"  Father  Lynch 
inquired. 

"He  said  he  was  a  Socialist,"  the  Dean  admit- 
ted. 

"And  what  does  he  say  now?" 

"He  is  not  much  of  a  talker,"  said  the  Dean 
slowly.  "He  is  a  man  whose  heart  has  passed 
through  a  riot  of  pride  and  fire  and  suffering, 
which  he  thought  was  the  end  of  the  world,  and 
he  has  come  out  on  the  other  side,  only  to  find 
God  standing  there  with  His  finger  on  it  all. 

"Jim  Loyd  was  never  a  Socialist,  in  the  sense 
we  mean.  He  could  not  be. 

"To-day  he  is  simply  a  great  man,  with  a  world 
of  suffering  behind  him,  with  the  traces  of  it  upon 
him;  and  with  a  power  of  good  before  him. 


"Maybe  it  took  something  of  Socialism  to  help 
make  him  what  he  is.  But  it  took  more,  a  great 
deal  more,  of  lasting,  deep  faith  in  God  to  bring 
him  through  it  all." 

"Will  you  tell  me,  Dean:  What  is  this  So- 
cialism?" 

"Father  Huetter  will  tell  you,"  said  the  Dean 
craftily. 

Father  Huetter  stood  in  the  doorway. 

"So,  you've  come  to  it,  Father  Lynch!  Well, 
you're  the  last  man  we  might  have  expected. 
But  they  all  do.  It's  in  the  air.  You  couldn't 
escape  it." 

"I  don't  feel  it  yet,"  said  Father  Lynch;  "but 
I  might,  if  you'd  tell  me  what  you're  talking 
about." 

"Socialism,"  said  Father  Huetter  unabashed. 
"You  were  just  asking  about  it.  Everybody  is 
asking  about  it.  Everybody  wants  to  know 
what  it  is." 

"Why  don't  they  read  the  books?  You  told 
me  to  do  that  once.  I  read  a  basketful  of  them 
last  week.  A  few  of  them  had  some  wise  old 
conundrums  that  I  used  to  hear  my  grandfather 
conning  over  to  himself,  back  in  Sixty-eight  when 
the  potatoes  were  bad.  The  rest  was  bosh." 

"It  isn't  the  kind  that's  in  the  books,  Father 
Lynch.  It's  the  kind  that's  in  the  air.  The 
kind  that  goes  from  one  man's  heart  to  another 
man's  heart.  It's  the  kind  of  Socialism  that 
makes  one  man  see  the  burden  pressing  into  the 


THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN        413 

other  man's  back:  It's  the  kind  that  makes  a 
man  start  and  turn  red  when  he  sees  a  child 
coughing  in  a  factory:  The  kind  that  makes  a 
man  want  to  fight  and  work  for  a  better  world 
to  live  in:  The  kind  that  wants  to  make  the 
world  sweeter  and  kinder,  and  fitter  for  Christ!" 

"Dean,"  said  Father  Lynch,  "this  young  man 
has  gotten  hold  of  a  part  of  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  and  he  thinks  it's  Socialism." 

But  Father  Huetter  swept  on: 

"John  Sargent  did  not  know  what  he  was  do- 
ing! He  did  not  know  why  he  was  doing  it! 
He  did  it  because  he  could  not  help  it! 

"There  is  a  spirit  stirring  in  this  great  land. 
It  is  a  spirit  of  helpfulness  and  understanding. 
It  is  whispering  to  high  and  low  a  message  which 
says  that  hopeless,  helpless  misery  and  suffering 
do  not  belong  in  this  world. 

"The  power  of  that  message  does  not  lie  in 
laws  that  may  be  written.  It  does  not  lie  in 
constitutions  that  may  be  framed.  It  lies  in  the 
thousands,  the  millions  of  hearts  that  are  echoing 
it.  The  cry  of  those  hearts  came  to  John  Sar- 
gent when  he  knew  it  not.  It  made  him  do  that 
which  he  would  not. 

"It  is  the  cry  of  the  broken  man:  It  is  the  cry 
of  the  heart-sick  woman:  It  is  the  cry  of  the 
hungry  child:  It  is  the  cry  of  the  unborn:  All 
crying  to  be  let  live  and  love! 

"And  they  will  be  heard! 

"Socialism?     This  is  Socialism:     The  old,  old 


414         THE  HEART  OF  A  MAN 

Socialism:  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thy 
self. 

"Likewise:    It  is  Faith." 


THE  END 


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MAN.    net,  $0.75.  ROMANCE  OF  THE  SILVER  SHOON. 
LITTLE  MARSHALLS  AT  THE  LAKE.       BEARNE,  S J.    net,  $1.50. 

NDCON-ROULET.    net,  $1.00.  ST.    CUTHBERT'S.    COPUS,    S.J.    net, 
LITTLE  MISSY.  WAGGAMAN.  n«/,$o.75.       $1.50. 

LOYAL   BLUE   AND    ROYAL   SCAR-  SANDY   JOE.    WAGGAMAN.    net,   $1.50. 

LET.    TAGGART.    net,  $1.50.  SEA-GULL'S    ROCK.    SANDEAO.    net, 
LUCKY  BOB.     FINN,  S.J.    net,ti.So.  $0.75. 

MADCAP  SET  AT  ST.  ANNE'S.    BRD-  SEVEN    LITTLE    MARSHALLS. 

NOWE.    net,  $0.75.  NDCON-ROULET.    net,  $0.75. 

MAD  KNIGHT,  THE.    SCHACHING.   net,  SHADOWS  LIFTED.      COPUS,  S.J.    net, 

MAKING  OF  MORTLAKE.    COPUS,  S.J.  SHEil  PLUCK.  BEARNE,  S.J.  net,  $1.50. 

net,  $1.50.  SHERIFF    OF    THE    BEECH    FORK. 

MAN     FB~~~     " 


JACK 


••ROM     NOWHERE.    SADLIER.  SPALDING,  S.J.    net,  $1.50. 

net,  $1.50.  SHIPMATES.      WAGGAMAN.    net,  $1.00. 

MARKS    OF    THE    BEAR     CLAWS.  SUGAR  CAMP  AND  AFTER.     SPALD- 

Sp  AIDING,  S.J.    net,  $1.50.  ING,  S.J.    net,  $1.50. 

MARY     TRACY'S     FORTUNE.    SAD-  SUMMER  AT  WOODVILLE.     SADLIER. 

LIEU,     net,  $0.75.  net,  $0.75. 


TALES  AND  LEGENDS  OF  THE 
MIDDLE  AGES.  DE  CAPELLA.  net, 
$1.00. 

TALISMAN,  THE.    SADLIER.    tut,  $1.00. 

TAMING    OF    POLLY.    DORSEY.    net, 

THAT°'FOOTBALL  GAME.  FINN,  s.j. 

net.  $1.5*. 

THAT  OFFICE  BOY.  FINN,  S.J.  net, 
$1.50. 

THREE  LITTLE  GIRLS  AND  ESPE- 
CIALLY ONE.  TAGGABT.  net,  $0.75. 

TOLD  IN  THE  TWILIGHT.  SALOME. 
net,  $1.00. 

TOM  LOSELY;  BOY.    COPUS,  S.J.    net, 

TOMPLAYFAIR.    FINN.  S.J.   net,  $1.50. 


TOM'S  LUCK-POT.  WACGAMAN.  net, 
$0.75. 

TOORALLADDY.    WALSH,    net,    $0.75. 

TRANSPLANTING  OF  TESSIE.  WAC- 
GAMAN. net,  $1.00. 

TREASURE  OF  NUGGET  MOUN- 
TAIN. TAOGART.  net,  fi.oo. 

TWO    LITTLE    GIRLS.      MACK,      net, 

UNCLE    FRANK'S    MARY.    CLEMEN- 

TIA.    net,  $1.50. 
UPS    AND    DOWNS   OF   MARJORIE. 

WAGGAMAN.     net,  $0.75. 
VIOLIN    MAKER.    SMITH,    net,    $0.75. 
WINNETOU,  THE  APACHE  KNIGHT. 

TAGGART.    net,  $1.00. 
YOUNG  COLOR  GUARD.    BONESTEEL, 

net,  $0.75. 


VH.  NOVELS 


ISABEL    C.    CLARKE'S    GREAT 

NOVELS.    Each,  net,  $3.35. 
URSULA  FINCH. 
THE  ELSTONES. 
EUNICE. 

LADY  TRENT'S  DAUGHTER. 
CHILDREN  OF  EVE. 
THE  DEEP  HEART. 
WHOSE  NAME  IS  LEGION. 
FINE  CLAY. 
PRISONERS'  YEARS. 
THE  REST  HOUSE. 
ONLY  ANNE. 
THE  SECRET  CITADEL. 
BY  THE  BLUE  RIVER. 

AGATHA'S  HARD  SAYING.    MULHOL- 

LAND.     net,  $1.65. 
ALBERTA:    ADVENTURESS.       L'Ec- 

MTTE.     8vo.    net,  $2.25. 
BACK    TO    THE    WORLD.    CHAMPOL. 

net.  $2.25. 

BARRIER,  THE.    BAZIN.    net,  $1.65. 
BALLADS    OF    CHILDHOOD.    Poems. 

EARLS,  S.J.    net,  $1.50. 
BLACK  BROTHERHOOD,  THE.    GAR- 

ROLD,  S.J.    net,  $2.25. 
BOND  AND  FREE.   CONNOR,  net,  $1.00. 
"BUT  THY  LOVE  AND  THY  GRACE." 

FINN,  S.J.    net,  $1.50. 
BY     THE     BLUE     RIVER.    CLARKE. 

net,  $2.25. 
CARROLL  DARE.    WAGGAMAN.    net, 

$1.25. 
CIRCUS-RIDER'S         DAUGHTER. 


BRACKEL.    net,  $125. 
CHILDREN   OF    EVE. 

CONNOR      D'ARCY'S 


CLARKE,     net, 
STRUGGLES. 


BERTBOLDS.    net,  $1.25. 
CORINNE'S  VOW.     WAGG 

DAUGHTER  OF  KINGS,  A. 

net,  $2.25. 
DEEP    HEART,    THE.    CLARKE. 

$2.2S. 

DION  AND  THE  SIBYLS.    KEON. 

$1.25. 
ELDER  MISS  AINSBOROUGH,  THE. 

TAGOART.    net,  $1.25. 
ELSTONES,  THE.    CLARKE,    net,  $3.35. 


.MAN.     net, 

HlNKSOM. 

net, 
net. 


EUNICE.    CLARKE,    net,  $2.35. 
FABIOLA.    WISEMAN,    net,  $1.00. 
FABIOLA'S    SISTERS.      CLARKE,     net, 

3i-2s. 
FATAL  BEACON,  THE.          BRACKEL. 

net,  $1.25. 

FAUSTULA.    AYSCOUGH.    net,  $2.25. 
FINE  CLAY.    CLARKE,    net,  $3.25. 
FORGIVE     AND     FORGET.    LINGEN. 

net,  $1.23. 
GRAPES    OF    THORNS'    WAGGAMAN. 

net,  $1.25. 
HEART    OF    A    MAN.    MAHER.    net, 

$2.25. 

HEARTS  OF  GOLD.   EDHOR.  net,  $1.25. 
HEIRESS  OF  CRONENSTEIN.    HAHN- 

HAHN.    net,  $1.00. 

HER  BLIND  FOLLY.    HOLT,    net,  $1.25 
HER  FATHER'S  DAUGHTER.    HINK- 

SON.    net,  $2.25. 
HER  FATHER'S  SHARE.    POWER,    net, 

$1.25. 
HER  JOURNEY'S  END.    COOKE.     net, 

IDOLS;'  or  THE  SECRET  OF  THE 
RUE  CHAUSSE  D'ANTIN.  DE  NAV- 
ERY.  net,  $1.25. 

IN  GOD'S  GOOD  TIME.  Ross,  net, 
$1.00. 

IN  SPITE  OF  ALL.    STANITORTH,  net, 

IN  THE  DAYS  OF  KING  HAL.  TAG- 
CART,  net,  $1.25. 

IVY  HEDGE,  THE.    EGAN.    net,  $2.25. 

KIND  HEARTS  AND  CORONETS. 
HARRISON,  net,  $1.25. 

LADY  TRENT'S  DAUGHTER. 
CLARKE,  net,  $2.25. 

LIGHT  OF  HIS  COUNTENANCE. 
HART,  net,  $1.00. 

"LIKE  UNTO  A  MERCHANT."  GRAY. 
net,  $2.25. 

LINKED  LIVES.    DOUGLAS,    net,  $2.25. 

LITTLE  CARDINAL.    PARR.    n<rf,$i.6s. 

LOVE  OF  BROTHERS.    HINKSON.    net, 

MARCELLA      GRACE.    MULHOLLAND. 

net,  $1.35. 
MARIE  OF  THE  HOUSE  D'ANTERS. 

EA*LS,SJ.    »*,  $3.3$. 


MELCHIOR  OF  BOSTON.    EARLS,  SJ. 

net,  $1.25. 
MIGHTY    FRIEND,    THE.    L'ERMTTE. 

nei,  $2.25. 
MIRROR  OF  SHALOTT.    BENSON,    net, 

$2.23. 

MISS  ERIN.    FRANCIS,    net,  $1.25. 
MR.    BELLY    BUTTONS.    LECKY.    net, 

MONK'S  PARDON,  THE.    DE  NAVERY. 


net,  $1.25. 
MY   LADY 


BEATRICE.     COOKE.    net, 


N  JUDGMENT.   KEON.    ^,$,63. 

ONLY  ANNE.     CLARKE,  net,  $2.25. 
OTHER    MISS    LISLE.    MARTIN,    ml, 

$1-00- 

OUT  OF  BONDAGE.    HOLT,    net,  $1.25. 


PASSING    SHADOWS.    YORKE.        net, 

PER'E  MONNIER-S  WARD.  LECKY. 

nfl   <!t  fie 

PILKINGTON  HEIR,  THE.    SADLIER, 
_,,«.,, 

PRISONERS'  YEARS.        CLARK,    net, 
«-  2, 

PRODIGAL'S  DAUGHTER,  THE,  AND 

OTHER  STORIES.  BUGG.  net,  $1.50. 
PROPHET'S  WIFE.  'BROWNE,  net,  $1.25. 
RED  INN  OF  ST.  LYPHAR.  SADLIER. 

net  $i  23 

REST  HOUSE,  THE.  CLARKE,  net,  $2.23. 
ROSE  OF  THE  WORLD.    MARTIN,    net, 

$1.23. 
ROUND  TABLE    OF    AMERICAN 

CATHOLIC  NOVELISTS,    net,  $1.23. 
ROUND  TABLE  OF  FRENCH  CATH- 

OLIC  NOVELISTS,    net,  $1.23. 
ROUND  TABLE  OF  GERMAN  CATH- 

OLIC  NOVELISTS,    net,  $1.23. 
ROUND  TABLE  OF  IRISH  AND  ENG- 

LISH  CATHOLIC  NOVELISTS,    net, 

$i.as. 
RUBY    CROSS,    THE.    WALLACE,    net, 

$1.23. 
RULER  OF   THE  KINGDOM.    KEON. 

net,  $1.63. 
SECRET     CITADEL,    THE.    CLARKE. 

net, 


SECRET    OF    THE    GREEN    VASB. 

COOKE.     net,  $1.00. 
SHADOW    OF    EVERSLEIGH.    LANS- 

DOWNE.     net,  $1.00. 
SHIELD    OF    SILENCE.    HENRY-RUF- 

KN.     net,  $2.25. 

SO  AS  BY  FIRE.  CONNOR,  net,  $i  2? 
SON  OF  SIRO,  THE.  COPUS,  S.J.  net, 

STORY  OF  CECILIA,  THE.     HINKSON. 

net,  $1.65. 
STUORE.    EARLS,  S.J.    net,  $i.So. 

""SPg*  °F  ™E  HEART"  ^ 
TEST  OF  COURAGE.  Ross,  net,  $1.00. 
THAT  MAN'S  DAUGHTER.  Ross,  net, 


CHOICE     SKINNER 
OIHEE    DESERT. 

TIDEWAY^HE5'  AYSCOUGH.   net,  J,.2S. 

TRAINING  OF  SILAS.   DEVINE.  net, 

f  1-65. 

TRUE  STORY  OF  MASTER  GERARD. 

SADLIZR.     net,  $1.65. 
TURN  OF  THE  TIDE,  THE.    GRAY. 

n«/,  $1.25. 
UNBIDDEN     GUEST,    THE.    COOKE. 


^^.oc     AX™    ra~ 
CEDARS    AND    THE 

.  CANON  SHEEHAN.  net,  $2,23. 
UP  IN  ARDMUIRLAND.  BARRETT, 
T  O.S.B  net  $i  63. 

URSULA  FINCH.    CLARKE,    net,  $2.23. 
VOCATION  OF  EDWARD  CONWAY, 

THE.     EGAN.    net,  $1.63. 
WARGRAVE  TRUST,  THE.    REID,    net, 

$1.63. 
WAR    MOTHERS.    Poems.    GARESCHE. 

S.J.    net,  $0.60. 
WAY    THAT    LED    BEYOND,    THE. 

HARRISON,    net,  $1.25. 
WEDDING      BELLS     OF      GLENDA- 

LOUGH,  THE.     EARLS,  S.J.    net,  $2.23. 
WHEN     LOVE     IS     STRONG.    KEON 

net,  $1.63. 
WHOSE  NAME  IS  LEGION.      CLARKE. 

net,  $2.23. 
WOMAN  OF  FORTUNE,  A.   Run.  net, 

$1.65. 


